# Dark Princess/Part 2

PART II
THE PULLMAN PORTER
PART II
THE PULLMAN PORTER
September to December, 1923
Fall. Fall of leaf and sigh of wind. Gasp of the world-soul before, in crimson, gold, and gray, it dips beneath the snows. The flame of passing summer slowly dies in the looming shadow of death. Fall on the vast gray-green Atlantic, where waves of all waters heave and groan toward bitter storms to come. Fall in the crowded streets of New York, Fall in the heart of the world.
I
Matthew was paring potatoes; paring, paring potatoes. There was a machine in the corner, paring, too. But Matthew was cheaper than the machine and better. It was not hard work. It was just dull—idiotic, dull. He pared mechanically, with humped shoulders and half-closed eyes. Garbage lay about him, and nauseating smells combined of sour and sweet, decay and ferment, offal and delicacy, made his head dizzy and his stomach acrid. The great ship rose, shivered and screamed, dropped in the gray grave of waters, and groaned as the hot hell of its vast belly drove it relentlessly, furiously forward. The terrible, endless rhythm of the thing—paring, rising, falling, groaning, paring, swaying, with the slosh of the greasy dishwater, in the close hot air, set Matthew to dreaming.
He could see again that mother of his—that poor but mighty, purposeful mother—tall, big, and brown. What hands she had—gnarled and knotted; what great, broad feet. How she worked! Yet he seemed never to have realized what work was until now. On the farm—that little forty acres of whitish yellow land, with its tiny grove and river; its sweep of green, white cotton; its geese, its chickens, the cow and the old mule; the low log cabin with its two rooms and wide hall leading to the boarded kitchen behind—how he remembered the build​ing of that third room just before his father went away—work? Work on that curious little hell in paradise had not been work to him; it had been play. He had stopped when he was tired. But mother and the bent old father, had it been work for them—hard, hateful, heavy, endless, uninteresting, dull, stupid? Yes, it must have been like this, save in air and sun; toil must have dulled and hardened them. God! What did this world—
“That-a nigger did it—I know!—that-a-there damn nigger!”
The Italian bent over him. Matthew looked up at him without interest. His soul was still dreaming far away—rising, falling, paring, glowing. Somebody was always swearing and quarreling in the scullery. Funny for him to be here. It had seemed a matter of honor, life, death, to sail on this particular ship. He had, with endless courtesy and with less than a hundred dollars in his pocket, assured the Princess that he needed nothing. And then—fourth class to Hamburg, standing! and the docks. The Gigantic was there. Would she sail on it? He did not know. He approached the head steward for a job.
“No—no more work.” He stood hesitating. A stevedore who staggered past, raining sweat, dropped his barrow and hobbled away. Matthew left his bags, seized the heavy barrow, and trundled it on the ship. It was not difficult to hide until the boat had swung far down the channel. Then he went to the head steward again.
“What the hell are you doing here? Just like a damn nigger!”
Here again it came from the lips of the fat, lumbering Italian: “—damn-a nigger.” And Matthew felt a flat-handed cuff beside his head that nearly knocked him from the stool. He arose slowly, folded his arms, and looked at the angry man. The Italian was a great baby whom the men picked on and teased and fooled—cruel, senseless sport for people who took curious delight in tricking others of their kind.
It was to Matthew an amazing situation—one he could not for the life of him comprehend. These men were at the bottom of life—scullions. They had no pride of work. Who could have pride in such work! But they despised themselves. God was in the first cabin, overeating, guzzling, gambling, sleeping. They despised what He despised. He despised Negroes. He despised Italians, unless they were rich and noble. He despised scullion's work. All these things the scullions despised.
​Matthew and the Italian were butts—the Italian openly, Matthew covertly; for they were a little dashed at his silence and carriage. But they sneered and growled at the “nigger” and egged the “dago” on. And the Italian—big, ignorant moron, sweet and childish by nature, wild and bewildered by his strange environment, despised the black man because the others did.
This time their companions had slyly slipped potatoes into the Italian’s pan until he had already done twice the work of the others. But the last mess had been too large—he grew suspicious and angry, and he picked on Matthew because he had seen the others sneer at the dark stranger, and he was ready to believe the worst of him.
Matthew stood still and looked at the Italian; with a yell the irate man hurled his bulk forward and aimed a blow which struck Matthew’s shoulder, Matthew fell back a step and still stood looking at him. The scullery jeered:
“Fight—the nigger and the dago.”
Again the fist leaped out and hit Matthew in the nose, but still Matthew stood and did not lift his hand. Why? He could not have said himself. More or less consciously he sensed what a silly mess it all was. He could not soil his hands on this great idiot. He would not stoop to such a brawl. There was a strange hush in the scullery. Somebody yelled, “Scared stiff!” But they yelled weakly, for Matthew did not look scared. He was taller than the Italian, not so big, but his brown muscles rippled delicately on his lithe form. Even with his swelling nose, he did not look scared or greatly perturbed. Then there was a scramble. The kitchen steward suddenly entered, one of the caste of stewards—the visible revelation of God in the cabin; a splendid man, smooth-coated, who made money and yelled at scullions.
“Chief!”
The Italian ducked, ran and hid, and Matthew was standing alone.
The steward blustered: “Fighting, hey?”
“No.”
“I saw you.”
“You lie!”
The scullery held its breath.
The steward, with purple face, started forward with raised ​fist and then paused. He was puzzled at that still figure. It wouldn’t do to be mauled or killed before scullions. . . .
“All right, nigger—I'll attend to you later. Get to work, all of you,” he growled.
Matthew sat down and began paring, paring, again. But now the dreams had gone. His head ached. His soul felt stripped bare. He kept pondering dully over this room, glancing at the shifty eyes, the hunches and grins; smelling the smells, the steam, the grease, the dishwater. There was so little kindness or sympathy for each other here among these men. They loved cruelty. They hated and despised most of their fellows, and they fell like a pack of wolves on the weakest. Yet they all had the common bond of toil; their sweat and the sweat of toilers like them made one vast ocean around the world. Waves of world-sweat droned in Matthew’s head dizzily, and naked men were driven drowning through it, yet snapping, snarling, fighting back each other as they wallowed. Well, he wouldn’t fight them. That was idiotic. It was human sacrilege. If fight he must, he would fight stewards and cabin gentry—lackeys and gods.
He walked stiffly to his berth and sat half-dressed in a corner of the common bunk room, hating to seek his hot, dark, ill-ventilated bunk. The men were growling, sprawling, drinking, and telling smutty stories. They had, it seemed to Matthew, a marvelous poverty of capacity to enjoy—to be happy and to play.
The door opened. The kitchen steward came in, followed by a dozen men and women, evidently from the first cabin—fat, sleek persons in evening dress, the women gorgeous and bare, the men pasty-faced and swaggering. All were smoking and flushed with wine. Towns started and stared— My God!If one face appeared there—if the Princess came down and saw this, saw him here! He groaned and stood up quickly, with the half-formed design of walking out.
“A ring, men!” called the steward. The scullery glowered, smirked, and shuffled; backed to one side, torn by conflicting motives, hesitating.
“These ladies and gentlemen have given a purse of two hundred dollars to have this fight out between the darky and the dago. Strip, you—but keep on your pants. This gentleman is referee. Come, Towns. Now’s the chance for revenge.”
​The Italian rose, lounged forward, and looked at Towns truculently, furtively. His anger was gone now, and he was not sure Towns had wronged him. Towns looked at him, smiled, and held out his hand. The Italian stared, hesitated, then almost ran and grabbed it. Towns turned to the steward, still watching the door:
“We won’t fight,” he said.
“We ain’t gonna fight,” echoed the Italian.
“Throw them into the ring.”
“Try it,” cried Towns.
“Try it,” echoed the Italian.
The steward turned red and green. He saw a fat fee fading.
“So we can’t make you rats fight,” he sneered.
“Oh, yes, we'll fight,” said Matthew, “but we won’t fight each other. If rats must fight they fight cats—and dogs—and hogs.”
“Wow!” yelled the scullery, and surged.
“Home, James,” squeaked a shrill voice, “they ain’t gonna be no fight tonight.” She had the face of an angel, the clothes of a queen, and the manners of a prostitute. The guests followed her out, giggling, swaying, and swearing.
“S’no plash f’r min’ster’s son, nohow,” hiccoughed the youth in the rear.
The steward lingered and glanced at Matthew, teetering on heel and toe.
“So that’s your game. Trying to stir up something, hey? Planning Bolshevik stuff! D’ye know where I’ve half a mind to land you in New York? I'll tell you! In jail! D’ye hear? In jail!”
The room was restless. The grumbling stopped gradually. The men looked as though they wanted to talk to him, but Matthew crept to his bunk and pretended to sleep. What was going to happen? What would they do next? Were they going to make him fight his way over? Must he kill somebody? Of all the muddles that a clean, straight life can suddenly fall to, his seemed the worst. He tossed in his narrow, hot bed in an agony of fear and excitement. He slept and dreamed; he was fighting the world. Blood was spurting, heads falling, ghastly estate bulging, but he slew and slew until his neighbor yelled:
​“Who the hell you hittin’? Are youse crazy?” And the man fled in fear.
Matthew rose early and went to his task—paring, peeling, cutting, paring. Nothing happened. The steward said no further word. The scullery growled, but let Matthew alone. The Italian crept near him like a lost dog, trying in an inarticulate way to say some unspoken word.
So Matthew dropped back to his dreams.
He was groping toward a career. He wanted to get his hand into the tangles of this world. He wanted to understand. His revolt against medicine became suddenly more than resentment at an unforgivable insult—it became ingrained distaste for the whole narrow career, the slavery of mind and body, the ethical chicanery. His sudden love for a woman far above his station was more than romance—it was a longing for action, breadth, helpfulness, great constructive deeds.
And so, rising and falling, working and writhing, dreaming and suffering, he passed his week of days of weeks. He hardly knew when it ended. Only one day, washing dishes, he looked out of the porthole; there was the Statue of Liberty shining....
And Matthew laughed.
There is a corner in High Harlem where Seventh Avenue cuts the dark world in two. West rises the noble facade of City College—gray and green. East creeps the sullen Harlem, green and gray. There Matthew stood and looked right and left. Left was the world he had left—there were some pretty parlors there, conventional in furniture and often ghastly in ornament, but warm and homelike in soul. There was his own bedroom; Craigg’s restaurant with its glorious biscuit; churches whose music often brushed his ears sweetly, afar; crowded but neat apartments, swaggering but well-dressed lodgers, workers, visitors. He turned from it with a sigh. He had left this world for a season—perhaps forever. It would hardly recognize him, he was sure, for he was unshaven and poorly clothed.
He turned east, and the world turned too—to a more careless and freer movement, louder voices, and easier camaraderie. ​By the time Lenox Avenue was reached, the world was gay and vociferous, and shirt sleeves and overalls mingled with tailored trousers and silk hosiery. But Matthew walked on in the gathering gloom: Fifth Avenue—but Fifth Avenue at 135th Street; he knew it vaguely—a loud and unkempt quarter with flashes of poverty and crime. He went on into an ill-kept hall and up dirty and creaking stairs, half-lighted, and knocked on a door. There were loud voices within—loud, continuous quarreling voices. He knocked again.
“Come in, man, don’t stand there pounding the door down.”
Matthew opened the door. The room was hot with a mélange of smoke, bad air, voices, and gesticulations. Groups were standing and sitting about, lounging, arguing, and talking.
Sometimes they shouted and seemed on the point of blows, but blows never came. They appeared tremendously in earnest without a trace of smile or humor. This puzzled Matthew at first until he caught their broad a’s and curious singing lilt of phrase. He realized that all or nearly all were West Indians. He knew little of the group. They were to him singular, foreign and funny. He had never been in a group of them before. He looked about.
“Is Mr. Perigua in?”
Some one waved carelessly toward the end of the room without pause in argument or gesture. Matthew discovered there a low platform, a rickety railing, and within, a table and several men. They were talking, if anything, louder and faster than the rest. With difficulty he traced his way toward them.
“Mr. Perigua?”
No response—but another argument of which Matthew understood not a word.
“May I speak with Mr. Perigua?”
A man whirled toward him.
“Don’t you see I’m busy, man? Where’s the sergeant-at-arms? Why can’t you protect the privacy of my office when I’m in conference?”
A short, fat, black man reluctantly broke off an intense declamation and hastened up.
“What can I do for you? Are you a member?”
He seemed a bit suspicious.
“I don’t know—I have a message for Mr. Perigua.”
“Give it to me.”
​“It is not written—it is verbal.”
“All right, tell me; I’m Mr. Perigua’s representative—official sergeant-at-arms of this—” he hesitated and looked suspiciously at Matthew again—“club.”
Perigua had heard his name repeated and turned again. He was a thin, yellow man of middle size, with flaming black hair and luminous eyes. He was perpetual motion,talking, gesticulating, smoking.
“What?” he said.
“A message.”
“From where?”
“From—abroad.”
Perigua leaped to his feet.
“Get out,” he cried to his fellows— “State business. Committee will meet again tomorrow night— What? Then Tuesday— No? Well, then tomorrow at noon— You can’t— Well, we'll meet without you. Do you think the world must stand still while you guzzle? Come in. Sergeant, I’m engaged. Keep the gate. Well?”
Matthew sat down within the rail on a chair with half a back. The black eyes blazed into his, and the long thin fingers worked. The purple hair writhed out of place.
“I’ve been in—Berlin.”
“Yes?”
“And certain persons—”
“Yes, yes, man. My God! Get on with it.”
“—gave me a message—a word of greeting for Mr. Perigua.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Are you Mr. Perigua?”
“My God, man—don’t you know me? Is there anybody in New York that doesn’t know Perigua? Is there anybody in the world? Gentlemen”—he leaped to the rail—“am I Perigua?”
A shout went up.
“Perigua—Perigua forever!” And a song with some indistinguishable rhyme on “Perigua forever” began to roll until he stopped it with an impatient shout and gesture.
“Shut up. I’m busy.”
Matthew whispered to him. Perigua listened and rose to his feet with transfigured face.
“Man— My God! Come!” He tore toward the door.
​“Le jour de gloire est arrivé! Come, man,” he shouted, and dragging Matthew, he reached the door and turned dramatically:
“Men, I have news—great news—the greatest! Salute this Ambassador from the World—who brings salvation. There will be a plenary council tomorrow night. Midnight. Pass the word. Adieu.” And as they passed out, Matthew heard the song swell again—“Perigua, Perigua, Per—”
They passed upstairs to another room. It was a bedroom, dirty, disheveled, stuffed with furniture and with stale smells of food and tobacco. A scrawny woman, half-dressed, rose from the bed, and at an impatient sign from Perigua went into the next room and closed the door.
Perigua grasped Matthew by both hands and hugged him.
“Man,” he gasped, “man, God knows you're welcome. I am on my last legs. I don’t know where to turn. The landlord has dispossessed us, bills are pouring in, and over the country, the world, the brethren are clamoring. Now all is well. We are recognized—recognized by the great leaders of Asia and Africa. Pan-Africa stands at last beside Pan-Asia, and Europe trembles.”
Matthew felt his spirits droop. This man was no leader, he was too theatrical. Matthew felt that he must get at the facts before he took any steps.
“But tell me—all about your plans,” he said.
“Who are you?” countered Perigua.
Matthew answered frankly.
“I am a Pullman porter. I was a student in medicine, but I quit. I went to Europe and there by accident met people who had heard of you and your plans. They were not agreed, I must say plainly, as to their feasibility, but they commissioned me to investigate.”
“Did they send any money?”
“None at present. Later, if my reports are satisfactory, they may.”
“And you are a porter? How long have you been in service?”
Matthew answered: “Since this morning. You see, I came back as a scullion. Had some trouble on the boat because I was a stowaway, but despite all, they gave me fifty dollars for my work and offered to hire me permanently. I took the ​money, bought some clothes, and applied for a Pullman job. It seemed to me that it offered the best opportunity to see and know the Negroes of this land.”
“You're right, man, you're right. Have any trouble getting on?”
“Not much.”
Perigua pondered. “See here,” he said, “I'll make you Inspector of my organization and give you letters to my centers. Travel around as porter. Sound out the country—test out the organization. Make your report soon and get some money. Something must happen, and happen soon.”
“But what—” began Matthew.
Matthew never forgot that story. Out of the sordid setting of that room rose the wild head of Perigua, haloed dimly in the low-burning gas. Far out in street and alley groaned, yelled, and sang Harlem. The snore of the woman came fitfully from the next room, and Perigua talked.
Matthew had at first thought him an egotistic fool. But Perigua was no fool. He next put him down as an ignorant fanatic—but he was not ignorant. He was well read, spoke French and Spanish, read German, and knew the politics of the civilized world and current events surprisingly well. Was he insane? In no ordinary sense of the word; wild, irresponsible, impulsive, but with brain and nerves that worked clearly and promptly.
He had a big torn map of the United States on the wall with little black flags clustered over it, chiefly in the South.
“Lynchings,” he said briefly. “Lynchings and riots in the last ten years.” His eyes burned. “Know how to stop lynching?” he whispered.
“Why—no, except—”
“We know. Dynamite. Dynamite for every lynching mob.”
Matthew started and grew uneasy. “But,” he objected, “they occur sporadically-seldom or never twice in the same place.”
“Always a half dozen in Mississippi and Georgia. Three or four in South Carolina and Florida. There's a lynching belt. We'll blow it to hell with dynamite from airplanes. And then when the Ku Klux Klan meets some time, we'll blow them up. Terrorism, revenge, is our program.”
“But—” began Matthew as sweat began to ooze.
Perigua waved. He was a man difficult to interrupt. “We've ​got to have messengers continuously traveling to join our groups together and spread news and concert action. The Pullman porters have a new union on old-fashioned lines. I'm trying to infiltrate with the brethren. See? Now you're going to take a job as Inspector and run on a key route. Where are you running now?”
“New York to Atlanta.”
“Good! Boys don't like running south. You can do good work there.”
“But just a moment—are the Negroes back of you ready for this—this—”
“To a man! That is, the real Negroes—the masses, when they know and understand—most of them are too ignorant and lazy—but when they know! Of course, the nabobs and aristocrats, the college fools and exploiters—they are like the whites.”
Matthew thought rapidly. He did not believe a word Perigua said, but the point was to pretend to believe it. He must see. He must investigate. It was wild, unthinkable, terrible. He must see this thing through.
III
“George!”
Inherently there was nothing wrong with the name. It was a good name. The “father” of his country and stepfather of Matthew had rejoiced in it. Thus Matthew argued often with himself.
“George!”
It was the name that had driven Matthew as a student away from the Pullman service. It was not really the name—it was the implications, the tone, the sort of bounder who rejoiced to use it. A scullion, ennobled by transient gold and achieving a sleeping-car berth, proclaimed his kingship to the world by one word:
“George!”
So it seemed at least to oversensitive Matthew. It carried all the meaner implications of menial service and largess of dimes and quarters. All this was involved and implied in the right not only to call a man by his first name, but to choose that name for him and compel him to answer to it.
​So Matthew, the porter on the Atlanta car of the Pennsylvania Railroad, No. 183, and Southern Railroad, No. 33, rose in his smart and well-fitting uniform and went forward to the impatiently calling voice.
The work was not hard, but the hours were long, and the personal element of tact and finesse, of estimate of human character and peculiarities, must always be to the fore. Matthew had small choice in taking the job. He had arrived with little money and almost ragged. He had undertaken a mission, and after Perigua’s amazing revelation, he felt a compelling duty.
“Do you belong to the porters’ union?” asked the official who hired him.
“No, sir.”
“Going to join?”
“I had not given it a thought. Don’t know much about it.”
“Well, let me tell you, if you want your job and good run, keep out of that union. We’ve got our own company union that serves all purposes, and we’re going to get rid gradually of those radicals and Bolsheviks who are stirring up trouble.”
Matthew strolled over to the room where the porters were resting and talking. It was in an unfinished dark corner of the station under the stairs, with few facilities and no attempt to make it a club room even of the simplest sort.
“Say,” asked Matthew, “what about the union?”
No one answered. Some glanced at him suspiciously. Some went out. Only one finally sidled over and asked what Matthew himself thought of it, but before he could answer, another, passing, whispered in his ear, “Stool pigeon—keep your mouth.” Matthew looked after the trim young fellow who warned him. It was Matthew’s first sight of Jimmie.
The day had been trying. A fussy old lady had kept him trotting. A woman with two children had made him nurse; four Southern gentlemen gambling in the drawing-room had called him “nigger.” He stood by his car at Washington at 9.30 at night, his berths all made. To his delight Jimmie was on the next car, and they soon were chums. Jimmie was Joy. He was not much over twenty-five and so full of jokes and laughter that none, conductors, passengers, or porters, escaped the contagion of his good cheer. His tips were fabulous, and yet ​he was never merely servile or clownish. He just had bright, straight-eyed good humor, a quick and ready tongue; and he knew his job down to z. He was invaluable to the greenness of Matthew.
“Here comes a brownskin,” he whispered. “Hustle her to bed if she’s got a good berth in the middle of the car, else they’ll find a ‘mistake’ and put her in Lower One,” and he sauntered whistling away as the conductor stepped out. The conductor was going in for the diagram.
“Wait till I get back,” he called, nodding toward the coming passenger.
The young colored woman approached. She was well dressed but a bit prim. She had Lower Six. Matthew sensed trouble, but remembering Jimmie’s admonition, he showed her to her berth. She did not look at him, but he carefully arranged her things.
The conductor came back. “What did you put her there for?” he asked.
“She had a ticket for Six,” Matthew answered. Both he and the conductor knew that she had not bought that ticket in person. In Washington, they would never have sold a colored person going south Number Six—she’d have got One or Twelve or nothing. The conductor was mad. It meant trouble for him all next day from every Southerner who boarded the train.
“Tell her there’s some mistake—I’ll move her later." But Matthew did not tell her. On the contrary, he suggested to her that he make her berth. She knew why he suggested it, and she resented it, but consented without glancing at him. He sympathized even with her resentment. The conductor swore when he came through with the train conductor and found her retired, but he could do nothing, and Matthew merely professed to have misunderstood.
In the morning after an almost sleepless night and without breakfast, Matthew took special care of the dark lady, and when she was ready, carried her bag to the empty drawing-room and let her dress there in comfort. There again he felt and understood the resentment in her attitude. She could not be treated quite like other passengers. Yet she must know it was not his fault, and perhaps she did not know that the extra work of straightening up the drawing-room at the close of a ​twenty-four-hour trip was no joke. Still, he smiled in a friendly way at her as he brought her back to the seat which he had arranged first, so as to put her to the least unpleasantness from sitting in some other berth. A woman flounced up and away as the girl sat down.
She thanked Matthew primly. She was afraid to be familiar with a porter. He might presume. She was not pretty, but round-faced, light brown, with black, crinkly hair. She was dressed with taste, and Matthew judged that she was probably a teacher or clerk. She had a cold half-defiant air which Matthew understood. This class of his people were being bred that way by the eternal conflict. Yet, he reflected, they might say something pleasant and have some genial glow for the encouragement of others caught in the same toils.
Then, as ever, his mind flew back to Berlin and to the woman of his dreams and quest. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. He had searched the newspapers and unearthed but one small note in the New York Sunday Times, which proved that the Princess was actually on the Gigantic: “Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Bwodpur, has been visiting quietly with friends while en route from England to her home in India, by way of Seattle.” He smiled a bit dubiously; what had porters and princesses in common?
He came back to earth and began the daily struggle with the brushing and the bags through narrow aisles out to the door; to collect the coats and belongings and carefully brush the clothes of twenty people; to wait for, take, and appear thankful for the tip which was wage and yet might be thrown like alms; to find lost passengers in the smoking-car, toilet, or dining-room and lost hats, umbrellas, packages, and canes—Matthew came to dread the end of his journeys more than all else.
His colored passenger did “not care” to be brushed. As they rolled slowly through the yards, he glanced at her again.
“Anything I can do for you?” he asked.
“Aren’t you a college man?” she asked, rather abruptly.
“I was,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his face.
She regarded him severely. “I should think then you’d be ashamed to be a porter,” she said.
He bit his lips and gathered up her bags.
“It’s a damned good thing for you that I am,” he wanted to ​say; but he was silent. He only hoped desperately that she would not offer to tip him. But she did; she gave him fifteen cents. He thanked her.
IV
With a day off in Atlanta, Matthew and Jimmie looked up Perigua’s friends. Jimmie laughed at the venture, although Matthew did not tell him much of his plans and reasons.
“Don’t worry,” grinned Jimmie; “let the white folks worry; it’ll all come out right.”
They had a difficult time finding any of the persons to whom Perigua had referred Matthew. First, they went down to Decatur Street. It was the first time Matthew had been so far south or so near the black belt. The September heat was intense, and the flood of black folk overwhelmed him. After all, what did he know of these people, of their thoughts, ambitions, hurts, plans? Suppose Perigua really knew and that he who thought he knew was densely ignorant? They walked over to Auburn Avenue. Could any one tell them where the office of the Arrow was? It was up “yonder.” Matthew and Jimmie climbed to an attic. It was empty, but a notice sent them to a basement three blocks away—empty, too, and without notice. Then they ran across the editor in a barber shop where they were inquiring—a little, silent, black man with sharp eyes. No, the Arrow was temporarily suspended and had been for a year. Perigua? Oh, yes.
“Well, there could be a conference tonight at eight in the Odd Fellows Hall—one of the small rooms.”
“At what hour?”
“Well, you know colored people.”
If he came at nine he’d be early. Yes, he knew Perigua. No, he couldn’t say that Perigua had much of a following in Atlanta, but Perigua had ideas. Perigua had—yes, ideas; well, then, at nine. Jimmie said he’d leave him at that. He had a date, and he didn’t like speeches anyhow. They parted, laughing.
Nobody came until nine-thirty; by ten there was the editor, an ironmolder, a college student, a politician, a street cleaner, a young physician, an insurance agent, and two men who might have been idlers, agitators, or plain crooks. It was an ugly ​room, incongruously furnished and with no natural center like a fireplace, a table, or a rostrum. Some of the men smoked, some did not; there was a certain air of mutual suspicion. Matthew gathered quickly that this was no regular group, but a fortuitous meeting of particles arranged by the editor. Instead of listening to a conference, he found himself introduced as a representative of Mr. Perigua of New York, and they prepared to hear a speech. Matthew was puzzled, nonplused, almost dumb. He hated speech-making. His folk talked too easily and glibly in his opinion. They did not mean what they said—not half—but they said it well. But he must do something; he must test Perigua and his followers. He must know the truth. So Matthew talked—at first a little vaguely and haltingly; and then finally he found himself telling them almost word for word that conversation about American Negroes in Berlin. He did not say who talked or where it took place; he just told what was said by certain strangers. They all listened with deep absorption. The student was the first to break out with:
“It is the truth; we’re punk—useless sheep; and all because of the cowardice of the old men who are in the saddle. Youth has no recognition. It is fear that rules. Old slipper is afraid of missing his tea and toast.”
The editor agreed. “No recognition for genius,” he said. “I’ve published the Arrow off and on for three years.”
“Usually off,” growled the politician.
“And a damn poor paper it is,” added the ironmolder.
“I know it, but what can you expect from two hundred and fifty-eight paid subscribers? If I had five thousand I’d show you a radical paper.”
“Aw, it’s no good—niggers won’t stay put,” returned the politician.
“You mean they won’t stay sold,” said someone.
“We're satisfied—that’s the trouble,” said the editor. “We’re too damn satisfied. We’ve done so much more with ourselves than we ever dreamed of doing that we're sitting back licking our chops and patting each other on the back.”
“Well,” said the young physician, “we have done well, haven’t we ”
“You has,” growled the ironmolder. “But how ’bout us? You-all is piling up money, but it don’t help us none. If we ​had our own foundries, we'd get something like wages stead of scabbing to starve white folks.”
“Well, you know we are investing,” said the insurance agent. “Our company—”
“Hell! That ain't investment, it's gambling.”
“That's the trouble,” said the scavenger. “We'se strivers; we'se climbing on one another's backs; we'se gittin' up—some of us—by trompin' others down.”
“Well, at any rate, some do get up.”
“Yes, sure-but the most of us, where is we going? Down, with not only white folks but niggers on top of us.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?”
“What can we do? Merit and thrift will rise,” said the physician.
“Nonsense. Selfishness and fraud rise until somebody begins to fight,” answered the editor.
“Perigua is fighting.”
“Perigua is a fool—Negroes won't fight.”
“You won't.”
“Will you?”
“If I get a chance.”
“Chance? Hell! Can't any fool fight?” asked the editor.
“Sure, but I ain't no fool—and besides, if I was, how'd I begin?”
“How!” yelled the student. “Clubs, guns, dynamite!”
But the politician sneered. “You couldn't get one nigger in a million to fight at all, and then they'd sell each other out.”
“You ought to know.”
“I sure do!”
And so it went on. When the meeting broke up, Matthew felt bruised and bewildered.
V
Matthew walked into the church about noon. Jimmie positively refused to go. “Had all the church I need,” he said. “Besides, got a date!” The services were just beginning. It was a large auditorium, furnished at considerable expense and with some taste. It gave a sense of space and well-being. The voices of the surpliced choir welled up gloriously, and the tones of the minister rolled in full accents.
​Matthew particularly noticed the minister. He remembered the preacher at his own home—an old, bent man, outlandish, with blazing eyes and a fire of inspiration and denunciation that moved every auditor. But this man was young—not much older than Matthew—good-looking, intelligent and educated. This service of mingled music and ceremony was attractive, and the sermon—well, the minister did not say much, but he said it well; and if conventionally and with some tricks of the orator, yet he was pleasing and soothing. His Death was an interpretation of Fall—the approach of looming Winter and the test of good resolutions after the bursting Spring and fruitful Summer.
The audience listened contentedly but with no outbursts of enthusiasm. There were a few "amens" from the faithful near the pulpit, but they followed the cadence of the beautiful voice rather than the impact of his ideas. The audience looked comfortable, well fed and well clothed. What were they really thinking? What did the emancipation of the darker races mean to them?
Matthew lingered after the service, and his tall, well-clad figure attracted attention. A deacon welcomed him. He must meet the pastor; and at the door in his silk robe he did meet him. They liked each other at a glance. The minister insisted on his waiting until most of the crowd had passed. Matthew ventured on his queries.
“I've just returned from Germany—” he began.
The minister beamed: “Well, well! That's fine. Hope to take a trip over myself in a year or two. My people here insist. May get a Walker popularity prize. Now what do people over there think of us here? I mean, of us colored folk?”
It was the opening. Matthew explained at length some of the opinions he had heard expressed. The minister was keen with intelligent interest, but just as he was launching out in comment, they were interrupted.
“Brother Johnson, we're ready now and dinner will be on the table. Mustn't keep the old lady waiting.”
The speaker was a big, dark man, healthy-looking and pleasant, carefully tailored with every evidence of prosperity. His car and chauffeur were at the curb—a new Cadillac sedan.
The minister hesitated. "My friend, Mr. Towns—just from Germany—" he began.
​“Delighted, I’m sure.”
“Yes, this is Brother Jones, president of the Universal Mutual—you’ve heard, I know, of our greatest insurance society. Mr. Towns is just from Germany. I’ll—”
“Bring him along—bring him right along and finish your talk at the table. Always room in the pot for one more. Germany? Well! Well! Are they still licked over there? Been promising the old lady a trip for the last ten years—Germany, France, Italy and all. Like to take in Africa too. But you know how it is—business—” And they were packed into the big car and gliding away.
There was no chance to finish the talk with the young minister. The host started off talking about himself, and nothing could stop him. His home was big and costly—too overdone to be beautiful, but with a good deal of comfort and abundant hospitality. He served a little whiskey to Matthew upstairs with winks and asides about the minister; and then, downstairs and everywhere he talked of himself. He was so naïve and so thoroughly interested in the subject that none had the heart to interrupt him, although his wife, as she fidgeted in and out helping the one rather unskillful maid, would say now and then:
“Now, John—stop boasting!”
John would roar good-naturedly—hand around another helping of chicken or ham, pass the vegetables and hot bread, and begin just where he left off: “And there I was without a cent, and four hundred dollars due. I went to the bank—the First National—old man Jones was my people, his grandfather owned mine. ‘Mr. Jones,’ says I, ‘I want five hundred dollars cash today!’
{{“ ‘Well, John,’ says he, ‘what’s the security?’
“‘I’m the security,’ says I, and, sir, he handed me the cash! Well, he wasn’t out nothing. My check in five figures goes at the bank today—don’t it, Reverend?” And so on, and so forth. It was frank, honest self-praise, and his audience hung on his words, although most of them had heard the story a hundred times.
“So you’ve been to Germany? Well, well! Have they got them radicals in jail yet? Italy’s got the dope. Old Moso—what’s his name? Mr. Jones was saying the last time I was in the bank, making my weekly deposit—what was it? About six ​thousand dollars, as I remember—says he, ‘John, we need a Mosleny right here in America!’”
“You’re not against reform, are you, Mr. Jones?”
“No; no, sir, I’m a great reformer. But no radical. No anarchist or Bolshevik. We’ve got to protect property.”
There was an interruption from some late arrivals.
“What boat did you return on?” asked somebody.
Matthew smiled and hesitated.
“The Gigantic,” he said, and he wanted to add, “In the scullery.” Could they stand the joke? He looked up and decided they couldn’t, for he was looking into the eyes of the latest arrival, and she was the prim young person who had tipped him fifteen cents yesterday morning!
“Mr. Towns, who has just returned from a trip to Germany, Miss Gillespie. Miss Gillespie is our new principal of the recently equipped Jones school—named after the President of the First National.”
Matthew smiled, but Miss Gillespie did not. She frankly stared, bowed coldly, and then, after a small mouthful or two, whispered to her neighbor. The neighbor whispered, and then slowly the atmosphere of the table changed. Matthew was embarrassed and amused, and yet how natural it all was—that unfortunate smile of his—that unexplained trip to Germany, and the revelation evidently now running around that he was a Pullman porter. They thought him a liar through and through. It was not simply that he was a railway porter—no, no! Mr. Jones was democratic and all that; but after all one did not make chance porters guests of honor; and Mr. Jones, when the whispering reached him, grew portentously and emphatically silent.
Matthew, now thoroughly upset, rose with the others and made his way straight to the minister.
“Say, I seem to have cut a hog,” he said. The minister smiled wanly and said, “I’m afraid I’m to blame—I—”
“No, no,” said Matthew, and then tersely he told of his rebuff and flight to Europe and his return to “begin again.” “I did not mean really to sail under false colors, and I did come home on the Gigantic. I pared potatoes all the way over.”
The minister burst into a laugh. They shook hands, and with a hurried farewell to a rather gruff host, Matthew slipped ​away. But he left fifteen cents for Miss Gillespie. Jimmie roared when Matthew told him.
VI
In October, Matthew wrote his first report for the Princess. He wrote it on his knee and in his one chair, sitting high up in the narrow furnished bedroom which he had hired in New York on West Fifty-ninth Street. It was a noisy and dirty region, but cheap and near his work. There was a bed, a chair, and a washstand, and he had bought a new trunk, in which he locked up his clothes and few belongings.
“Your Royal Highness:
“I have at your request made a hasty but careful survey of the attitude of my people in this country, with regard to the possibility of their aid to a movement looking toward righting the present racial inequalities in the world, especially along the color line.
“My people are increasing in material prosperity. A few are even accumulating wealth; large numbers own their homes and live in cleanliness and a fair degree of comfort. Extreme poverty and crime are decreasing, while intelligence is increasing. There is still oppression and insult, some lynching, and much caste and discrimination; but on the whole the Negro has advanced so rapidly and is still advancing at such a rate that he is more satisfied than complaining. He is astonished and gratified at his own success, and while he knows that he is not treated quite as a man and lacks the full freedom of a white man, he believes that he is daily approaching this goal.
“This main movement and general feeling is by no means shared by all. There is bitter revolt in the hearts of a small intelligentsia who resent color-caste, and among those laborers who feel in many ways the pinch of economic maladjustment and see the rich Negroes climbing on their bowed backs. These classes have no common program, save complaint, protest, and inner bickering; and only in the case of a small class of immigrant West Indians has this complaint reached the stage that even contemplates violence.
“Perigua is a man of intelligence and fire—of a certain ​honesty and force; but he is not to be trusted as a leader. His organization is a loose mob of incoherent elements united only by anger and poverty. They have their reasons. I first thought Perigua a vain and egotistic fool. But the other night sitting in his dirty flat—a furious, ragged figure of bitter resentment—he told me part of his story; spat it out in bits: of the beautiful wife whom an Englishman seduced; the daughter who became a prostitute; of the promotion refused him in the railroad shops because of color, and his fight with the color line in the army; of his prosecution for ‘inciting to riot’; his conviction and toil in jails and chain gangs, with vermin and disease; and of his long, desperate endeavor to stir up revolt in America. Perigua and those whom he represents have a grievance and a remedy, but he will never accomplish anything systematic. Do not think of contributing to his organization. I still have your envelope unopened. He has no real organization. He has only personal followers.
“On the other hand, the Negroes are thick with organizations—they are threaded through with every sort of group movement; but their organizations so far chime and accord with the white world; their business organizations, growing fast, have the same aims and methods as white business; their religion is a replica of white religion, only less snobbish because less wealthy. Even their labor movement is the white trade union, hampered by the fact that white unions discriminate and that colored labor is the wage-hammering adjunct of white capital.
“Your Highness and the friends whom I had the honor of meeting may then well ask, ‘Are these folk of any possible use to a movement to abolish the present dictatorship of white Europe?’ I answer, yes, a hundred times. American Negroes are a tremendous social force, an economic entity of high importance. Their power is at present partly but not wholly dissipated and dispersed into the forces of the overwhelming nation about them. But only in part. A tremendous striving group force is binding this group together, partly through the outer pounding of prejudice, partly by the growth of inner ideals. What they can and will do in the rebuilding of a better, bigger world is on God’s knees and not now clear; but clarity dawns, and so far as we gain self-consciousness today we can be a force tomorrow.
​“The burning question is: What help is wanted? What can we do? What are your aims and program? I know well from your own character and thought that you could not encourage mere terrorism and mass murder. The very thought of ten million grandchildren of slaves trying to wrest liberty from ten times their number of rich, shrewder fellows by brute force is, of course, nonsense. On the other hand, with intelligenece and forethought, concentrated group action, we can so align ourselves with national and world forces as to gain our own emancipation and help all of the colored races gain theirs.
“Frankly then, what is the Great Plan? How and when can we best cooperate? What part can I take? I am eager to hear from you.
“I am, your Royal Highness”—
There came a knock on the door, and Matthew opened it. A young Japanese stood there who politely asked for Mr.Keswick. No, Mr. Keswick was not here and did not live here. In fact, Matthew had never heard of Mr. Keswick. The Japanese was sorry—very, very sorry for the intrusion. He went softly down the stairs.
VII
There was no answer to Matthew’s report. He had given the Princess a temporary address at Perigua’s place, and in this report he enclosed this room as a permanent one. He had sent the Princess’ letter to her bankers, as agreed on. Still there was no word or sign. Matthew was at first patient. After the second week, he tried to be philosophical. At the end of a month, he was disappointed and puzzled. By the first of December the whole thing began to assume a shape grotesque and unreal. They over there had perhaps succeeded in changing her mind. Perhaps she herself, coming and seeing with her own eyes, had been disillusioned. It would be hard for a stranger to see beneath the unlovely surface of this racial tangle. But somehow he had counted or this woman—on her subtlety and vision; on her own knowledge of the color line.
He did not know what to do. Should he write again? His pride said no, but his loyalty and determination kept him following up Perigua and remaining in touch with him. At ​least once a week they had conferences and Matthew reported. This week there was, as usual, little to report. He had seen a dozen men—three crazy, three weak, three dishonest, three willing but bewildered, dazed, lost. Broken reeds all. Perigua listened dully, hunched in his chair, chewing an unlit cigar—unkempt, unshaven, ill. His eyes alone lived and flamed as with unquenchable fire.
“Any money yet from abroad?” he asked.
“No.”
“Have you asked for any?”
“No.”
“So,” said Perigua. “You think it useless?” Hitherto Matthew had tried to play his part—to listen and study and say little as to his own thought. Suddenly, now, a pity for the man seized him. He leaned forward and spoke frankly:
“Perigua, you’re on the wrong tack. First of all, these people are not ready for revolt. And next, if they were ready, it’s a question if revolt is a program of reform today. I know that time has been when only murder, arson, ruin, could uplift; when only destruction could open the path to building. The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.”
Perigua glared. “And that time’s here, I suppose?”
“I don’t know,” said Matthew. “But I hope, I almost believe it is. It must be after that hell of ten years ago. At any rate, none of us Negroes are ready for such a program against overwhelming odds—”
“No,” yelled Perigua. “We're tame tabbies; we’re fawning dogs; we lick and growl and wag our tails; we're so glad to have a white man fling us swill that we wriggle on our bellies and crawl. We slave that they may loll; we hand over our daughters to be their prostitutes; we wallow in dirt and disease that they may be clean and pure and good. We bend and dig and starve and sweat that they may sit in sweet quiet and reflect and contrive and build a world beautiful for themselves to enjoy.
“And we're not ready even to protest, let alone fight. We want to be free, but we don’t dare strike for it. We think that the blows of white men—of white laborers, of white women—are blows for us and our freedom! Hell! you damned fool, they have always been fighting for themselves. Now, they’re half ​free, with us niggers to wait on them; we give white carpenters and shop girls their coffee, sugar, tea, spices, cotton, silk, rubber, gold, and diamonds; we give them our knees for scrubbing and our hands for service—we do it and we always shall until we stand and strike.”
And Perigua leaped up, struck the table until his clenched hand bled.
Matthew quailed. “I know—I know,” he said. “I’m not minimizing it a bit. In a way, I'm as bitter about it all as you—but the practical question is, what to do about it? What will be effective? Would it help, for instance, to kill a couple of dozen people who, if not innocent of intentional harm, are at least unconscious of it?”
“And why unconscious? Because we don't make ’em know. Because you’ve got to yell in this world when you’re hurt; yell and swear and kick and fight. We're dumb. We dare not talk, shout, holler. And why don’t we? We’re afraid, we’re scared; we’re congenital idiots and cowards. Don’t tell me, you fool—I know you and your kind. Your caution is cowardice inbred for ten generations; you want to talk, talk, talk and argue until somebody in pity and contempt gives you what you dare not take. Go to hell—go to hell—you yellow carrion! From now on I’ll go it alone.”
“Perigua—Perigua!”
But Perigua was gone.
Matthew was nonplused. All his plans were going awry. Still no word or sign from the Princess, and now he had alienated and perhaps lost touch with Perigua. What next? He paused in the smoky, dirty club rooms and idly thumbed yesterday morning’s paper. Again he inquired for mail. Nothing. He stood staring at the paper, and the first thing that leaped at him from a little inconspicuous paragraph on the social page was the departure “for India, yesterday, of her Royal Highness, the Princess of Bwodpur.”
He walked out. So this was the end of his great dream—his world romance. This was the end. Whimsically and for the last time, he dreamed his dream again: The Viktoria Café and his clenched fist. The gleaming tea table, the splendid dinner. Again he saw her face—its brave, high beauty, its rapt interest, its lofty resolve. Then came the grave face of the Japanese, the disapproval of the dark Indians, the contempt ​of the Arab. They had never believed, and now he himself doubted. It was not that she or he had failed—it was only that, from the beginning, it had all been so impossible—so utterly unthinkable! What had he, a Negro, in common with what the high world called royal, even if he had been a successful physician—a great surgeon? And how much less had Matthew Towns, Pullman porter!
A dry sob caught in his throat. It was hard to surrender his dream, even if it was a dream he had never dared in reality to face. Well, it was over! She was silent—gone. He was well out of it, and he walked outdoors. He walked quickly through 135th Street, past avenue and park. He climbed the hill and finally came down to the broad Hudson. He walked along the viaduct looking at the gray water, and then turned back at 133rd Street. There were garages and old, decaying buildings in a hollow. He hurried on, past “Old Broadway” and up a sordid hill to a still terrace, and there he walked straight into the young Atlanta minister.
“Hello! I am glad to see you.”
For a moment Matthew couldn’t remember—then he saw the picture of the church—the dinner and the Joneses.
He greeted the minister cordially. “How is Miss Gillespie?” he asked with a wry grin.
“Married—married to that young physician you met at the radical conference. Oh, you see we followed you up. They have gone to Chicago. Well, here I am in New York on a holiday. Couldn’t get off last summer and thought I’d run away just before the holidays. Been here a week and going back tomorrow. Hoped I might run across you. I feel like a man out of a strait-jacket. I tell you this being a minister today is—is—well, it’s a hard job.”
“My experience is,” said Matthew, “that life at best is no cinch.”
The minister smiled sympathetically. “I tell you,” he said, “let’s have a good time. I want to go to the theater and see movies and hear music. I want to sit in a decent part of a good theater and eat a good dinner in a gilded restaurant, and then”—he glanced at Matthew—“yes, then I want to see a cabaret. I’ve preached about ballrooms and ‘haunts of hell,’” he said with a whimsical smile, “but I’ve never seen any.”
Matthew laughed. “Come on,” he said, “and we'll do the ​best we can. The first balcony is probably the best we can do at a theater, and not the best seats there; but in the movies where ‘all God’s chillun’ are dark, we can have the best.That gilded restaurant business will be the worst problem. We’d better compromise with the dining-room at the Pennsylvania station. There are colored waiters there. At the Grand Central we'd be fed, but in the side aisles. But what of it? I’m in for a lark,and I too have a day off.—In fact,it looks as though I had a life off.”
They visited the Metropolitan Art Museum at the minister's special request; they dined about three at the Grand Central station, sitting rather cosily back but on one side, at a table without flowers. Matthew calculated that at this hour they would be better received than at the more crowded hours. Then they went at six to the Capitol and sat in the great, comfortable loge chairs.
The minister was in ecstasy. “White people have everything, don’t they?” he mused, as they walked up the Great White Way slowly, looking at the crowds and shop windows. “These girls, all dressed up and painted. They look—but—are many of them for sale?”
“Yes, most of them are for sale—although not quite in the way you mean. And the men, too,” said Matthew.
The minister was a bit puzzled, and as they went into the Guild Theater, said so. It was an exquisite place and they had fairly good seats, well forward in the first balcony.
“What do you mean—‘for sale’?” he asked.
“I mean that in a great modern city like New York men and women sell their bodies, souls, and thoughts for luxury and beauty and the joy of life. They sell their silences and dumb submissions. They are content to do things and let things be done; they promise not to ask just what they are doing, or for whom, or what it costs, or who pays. That explains our slavery.”
“This is not such bad slavery.”
“No—not for us; but look around. How many Negroes are here enjoying this? How many can afford to be here at the wages with which they must be satisfied if these white folks are to be rich?”
“You mean that all luxury is built on a foundation of poverty?”
​“I mean that much of the costliest luxury is not only ugly and wasteful in itself but deprives the mass of white men of decent homes, education, and reasonable enjoyment of life;and today this squeezed middle white class is getting its luxuries and necessities by inflicting ignorance, slavery, poverty, and disease on the dark colonies of European and American imperialism. This is the New Poverty and the basis of armies,navies,and war in Nicaragua, the Balkans, Asia, and African. Without this starvation and toil of our dark fellows, you and I could not enjoy this.”
The minister was silent, for the play began. He only murmured, “We are consenting too,” and then he choked—and half an hour later, as the play paused, added, “And what are we going to do about it? That’s what gets me. We’re in the mess. It’s wrong—wrong. What can we do? I can’t see the way at all."
Then the play swung on: beautiful rooms; sleek, quiet servants; wealth; a lovely wife loving another man. The husband kills him; the curtain leaves her staring at a corpse with horror in her eyes.
The minister frowned. “Do they always do this sort of thing?” he asked.
“Always,” Matthew answered; and the minister added: “Why can’t they try other themes—ours for instance; our search for dinner and our reasons for the first balcony. Good dinner and good seats—but with subtle touches, hesitancies, gropings, and refusals that would be interesting; and that woman wasn’t interesting.”
They rode to Harlem for a midnight lunch and planned afterward to visit a cabaret. The minister was excited. “Don’t flutter,” said Matthew genially; “it'll either be tame or nasty.”
“You see,” said the minister, “sex is curiously thrust on us parsons. Men dislike us—either through distrust or fear. Women swarm about us. The Church is Woman. And there I am always, comforting, advising, hearing tales, meeting evil ducking, dodging, trying not to understand—not understanding—that’s the trouble. Towns, what the devil should I know of the temptations—the dirt—the—”
“Look here!" interrupted Towns. They were in a restaurant on Seventh Avenue. It was past midnight. The little half-basement was tasteful and neat, but only a half dozen people were ​there. The waffles were crisp and delicious. Matthew had bought a morning paper. Glancing at it carelessly, as the minister talked, he shouted, “Look here!” He handed the paper to the minister and pointed to the headlines. The Ku Klux Klan was going to hold a great Christmas celebration in Chicago.
“In Chicago?”
“Yes,”
“But Chicago is a stronghold of Catholics.”
“I know. But watch. The Klan is planning a comeback. It has suffered severe reverses in the South and in the East; I'll bet a dollar they are going to soft-pedal Rome and Jewry and concentrate on the new hatred and fear of the darker races in the North and in Europe. That’s what this meeting means.”
The minister frowned and read on.... Klansmen from the whole country will meet there. The grand officers and Southern members will go from headquarters at Atlanta on a luxurious special train and meet other Klansmen and foreign guests in Chicago; there they will discuss the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and prepare for a great meeting on the Rising Tide of Color, to be called later in Europe.
“And we sit silent and motionless,” said the minister.
“That’s it; not only injustice, oppression, insult, a lynching now and then—but they rub it in, they openly flout us. Is there any group on earth, but us, who would lie down to it?”
The minister was silent.
Then he said, “They may be rallying against Rome and liquor rather than against us.”
“Nonsense,” said Matthew, and added, “What do you think of violence?”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose Negroes should blow up that convention or that fine de luxe Special and say by this bloody gesture that they didn’t propose to stand for this sort of thing any longer?”
The minister quailed. “But what good? What good? Murder, and murder mainly of the innocent; revenge, hatred, and a million ‘I told you so’s.’ ‘The Negro is a menace to this land!’”
“Yes, yes, all that; but not simply that. Fear; the hushing of loose slander and insult; the curbing of easy proposals to deprive us of things deeper than life. They look out for the Indian’s war whoop, the Italian’s knife, the Irishman’s club; what else appeals to barbarians but force, blood, war?”
​The minister answered slowly: “These things get on our nerves, of course. But you mustn’t get morbid and too impatient. We’ve come a long way in a short time, as time moves. We're rising—we’re getting on.”
But Matthew brooded: “Are we getting on so far? Aren’t the gates slowly, silently closing in our faces? Isn’t there widespread, deep, powerful determination to make this a white world?”
The minister shook his head; then he added: “We can only trust in Christ—”
“Christ!” blurted Matthew.
VIII
The cabaret was close, hot, and crowded. There was loud music and louder laughter and the clinking of glasses. More than half the patrons were white, and they were clustered mostly on one side. They had the furtive air of fugitives in a foreign land, out from under the eyes of their acquaintances. Some were drunk and noisy. Others seemed looking expectantly for things that did not happen, but which surely ought to happen in this bizarre outland! The colored patrons seemed more at home and natural. They were just laughing and dancing, although some looked bored.
The minister stared. “Are they having a good time, or just trying to?”
“Some of them are really gay. This girl here—”
The minister recoiled a little as the girl reached their table. She was pale cream, with black eyes and hair; and her body, which she was continuously raising her clothes to reveal, had a sinuous, writhing movement. She danced with body and soul and sang her vulgar “blues” with a harsh, shrill voice that hardly seemed hers at all. She was an astonishing blend of beauty, rhythm, and ugliness. She had collected all the cash in sight on the white side and now came over to the Negroes.
“Come on, baby,” she yelled to the minister, as she began singing at their table, and her writhing body curled like a wisp of golden smoke.The minister recoiled, but Matthew looked up and smiled. Some yearning seized him. It seemed so long since a woman’s hand had touched him that he scarce saw the dross of this woman. He tossed her a dollar, and as she ​stooped to gather it,she looked at him impishly and laughed in a softer voice.
“Thanks, Big Boy,” she said.
The proprietor with his half-shut eyes and low voice strolled by.
“Would you boys like a drop of something—or perhaps a little game?”
The minister did not understand.
“Whiskey and gambling,” grinned Matthew. The minister stirred uneasily and looked at his watch. They stayed on, ordering twenty-five-cent ginger ale at a dollar a bottle and gay sandwiches at seventy-five cents apiece, and a small piece at that.
“Honest,” said the minister, “I’m not going to preach against cabarets and dance halls any more.They preach against themselves. There’s more real fun in a church festival by the Ladies’ Aid!” Then he glanced again at his watch.
“Good Lord, I must go—it’s three o’clock, and I must leave for Philadelphia at six.”
Matthew laughed and they arose. As they passed out, the dancing girl glided by Matthew again and slipped her hand in his.
“Come and dance, Big Boy,” she said. Her face was hard and older than her limbs, but her eyes were kind. Matthew hesitated.
“Good-by,” he said to the minister, “hope to see you again some time soon.”
He went back with the girl.
IX
That trip in his Pullman seemed Matthew’s worst. Sometimes as he swung to Atlanta and back he almost forgot himself in the routine, and Jimmie’s inexhaustible humor always helped. He became the wooden automaton that his job required. He neither thought nor saw. He had no feelings, no wishes, and yet he was ears and voice, swift in eye and step,accurate and deferential. But at other times all things seemed to happen and he was a quivering bundle of protests, nerves—a great oath of revolt. It seemed particularly so this trip, perhaps because he was so upset about the Princess’ departure. ​Besides that, Jimmie left him at Atlanta. He had taken a few days off. “Got a date,” he grinned.
Matthew was lonesome and tired, and his return trip began with the usual lost article. People always lose something in a Pullman car, and always by direct accusation, glance, or innuendo the black porter is the thief. This time a fat, flashily dressed woman missed her diamond ring.
“—a solitaire worth five hundred dollars. I left it on the window-sill—it has been stolen.”
She talked loudly. The whole car turned and listened. The whole car stared at Matthew. It is no pleasant thing to be tacitly charged with theft and to search for vindication under the accusing eyes of two dozen people. Matthew took out the seats, raised the carpet, swept and poked. Then he went and dragged out all the dirty bed-linen from the close-packed closet and went over it inch by inch. He searched the women’s toilet room. Then coming back with growling conductor and whispering passengers, he found the ring finally in the spittoon. He got little thanks—indeed he knew quite well that some would think he had concealed it there. The woman gave him fifty cents. Also he missed his breakfast, and his head ached.
The inevitable woman with the baby was furious, for in his search he had forgotten to get the hot milk from the diner, and the cook had used it. A man passed his station because the train conductor had not been notified of the extra stop. The Pullman conductor placed the blame on the porter.
“Damn niggers are good for nothing,” said the angry man.
Of course Matthew was supposed to be a walking encyclopedia of the country they were traversing:
“What town is this?”
“Greensboro, madam.”
“What mountains are those?”
“The Blue Ridge, sir.”
“What creek are we crossing?”
“I don’t know, madam.”
“Well, don’t you know anything?”
Matthew silently continued his dusting.
“Is that the James River?”
“It’s a portion of it, madam.”
“Is that darky trying to be smart?”
The bell rang furiously. To Matthew’s splitting head it ​seemed always angry.He brought cup after cup of ice water to people too lazy to take a dozen steps.
“Why the hell don’t you answer the bells when they ring?” growled the poker gambler who had the drawing-room. “Bring us some C. & C. ginger ale and be quick about it.”
“Sorry, but the—”
“Don’t answer me back, nigger.”
Matthew went and brought Clicquot Club, the only kind they carried. Apparently the passenger did not know the difference.
It was dinner time and he got a moment to sit down in the end section and dozed off.
“Do you hear?” an elderly man was yelling at him. “Which way is the diner?”
“Straight ahead, sir, second car.”
The man looked at him, “Asleep at your post is not the way to get on in this world,” he said.
Matthew looked at him. His patience was about at an end,and the man saw something in his eye; he added as he turned away: “Young man, my father fought and died to set you free.”
“Well, he did a damned poor job,” said Matthew, and he went into the smoking-room and into the toilet and shut and locked the door.
It was nearly ten at night when dinner for the porters was ready, for the passengers had stuffed themselves at lunch and were not hungry until late; the food left was cold and scarce, and the cooks too tired to bother. He was greeted by a chorus when he returned to the car. It began as he passed the drawing-room:
“Where’s that porter—George!”—“Can you get me some liquor—any fly girls on the train—how about that one in Lower 5?” Then outside: “Porter, will you please make this berth—you’ve passed it repeatedly. These colored men are too presuming.”—“Water!”—“When do we get to ———?”—“What station was that?”—“‘Please hand me my bag.”—“How can I get into that upper? Haven’t you a lower?”—‘Where’s the conductor?”—‘“What connections can I make?”—“How late are we?”—“When do we change time?”—“When is breakfast?”—“That milk for ba-aby, and right off!”—“Ice water.”—“Shoes!”
​Matthew left the train with a gasp and took the subway to Harlem. It was after midnight and clear and cold. He wanted warmth and company, and he went straight to the cabaret. He knew he was going, and all day long the yearning for some touch of sympathy and understanding had been overpowering. He wanted to forget everything. He was going to get drunk. He walked by Perigua’s place from habit. It was closed and vacant. No one whom he saw could tell him where Perigua was. Matthew turned and walked straight to the cabaret.
“Hello, Big Boy.”
He gripped the girl’s hand. It was the only handclasp that seemed even friendly that he had had for a long time. She curled her arm about his neck. “What do you say to a drink?” she asked. He drank the stuff that burned and rankled. He danced with the girl, and all the time his head ached and whirled. What could he do? What should he do?
He went out with her at four o’clock in the morning; he scarcely knew when or why. He wanted to forget the world. They whirled away in a taxi, and stumbled up long stairs, and then with a sigh he slipped his clothes off, and clasping his arms around her curving form, fell into dreamless sleep.
X
At the head of the stairs next morning Matthew met Perigua. The girl had looked at his haggard face with something like forgotten shame.
“Good-by, Big Boy,” she said, “you ain’t built for the sporting game. I wish”—she looked at him uncertainly, her face drawn and coarse in the morning light, her body drooping—“I wish I could help some way. Well, if you ever want a friend, come to me.”
“Thank you,” he said simply, and kissing her forehead, went. For a long time she stood with that kiss upon her brow.
Then he met Perigua coming out of the door opposite. Was he in Perigua’s building? He had been too drunk the night before to notice. No, this was too narrow for 135th Street. He met Perigua, and Perigua blazed at him:
“You're having a hell of a time, ain’t you! Prostitutes instead of patriotism.” Then he snarled, “Wake up! The time is come! Have you seen this?”
​It was an elaborate account of the coming meeting of the Klan in Chicago. Perigua was trembling with excitement. Matthew looked at him sharply. Something else was wrong; he looked hungry and wrought up with drink or excess. Matthew glanced at the paper.The great Klan Special was leaving Atlanta for Chicago three days later at 3.40 in the afternoon. Special cars with certain high guests would join them at variouspoints and from various cities.
“I’m going to Chicago,” said Perigua.
Matthew seized him by the shoulders.
“All right,” he said, “but first come and have breakfast.”
Perigua hesitated and then morosely yielded. They ate silently and then smoked.
“Perigua,” said Matthew, suddenly, “have you got money to go to Chicago?”
“Is that any of your damned business?”
“Yes, it is. If you are going to Chicago to look over the situation, consult with your lieutenants, and lay plans for future action, you need money. You ought to buy some clothes and stop at a good hotel.”
Matthew knew perfectly well that Perigua was going on some hare-brained mission and that he might in desperation do actual harm. He knew, too, that Perigua would like to go,or to imagine he was going, on some such mission as Matthew had sketched. Suddenly, Matthew was thinking of that unopened envelope given him by the Princess. Perhaps there lay the answer to her silence and departure as well as money. The envelope was to go to Perigua only in case he was found trust-worthy. But in case he was not and the envelope could not be returned, what then?
He took a quick resolve. “Come by my room—it’s on the way to the train.”
Silently Perigua followed. They went down by Elevated and soon were sitting in that upper room. Matthew went to his trunk.It was unlocked. He was startled. He did not remember leaving it unlocked; he searched hurriedly. Everything seemed intact, even his bank book and especially the sealed letter at the bottom, hidden among books. Matthew did not touch the envelope, but took out his savings bank book, and said:
“I’m going to give you one hundred and fifty dollars to get ​some clothes and go to a good hotel in Chicago. Try the Vincennes—I’ll write you there.”
They went out together to the bank.
Matthew returned feeling that he had done a wise thing. He had a string on Perigua and could keep in touch with him. Now for that envelope. The more he thought of it, the more he was sure that it would throw light on the situation. It was careless of him to have left his trunk unlocked. The landlady was all right, but the other lodgers! He drew out the letter and paused. What did he mean to do? He tore the letter open. A piece of paper fluttered out. He searched the envelope. Nothing more. He looked at the paper.
“Sir:
“In unwavering determination to protect the name of a certain high personage, we have taken the liberty to abstract her letter and draft. All her letters to you and yours to her will come to us. Will you not believe this is all for the best and that we remain, with every assurance of regard,
“Your Obedient Servants.”
Matthew stared. When and where had it been possible? He could not conceive. Then he remembered that polite little Japanese’s visit. The Princess had never heard a word from him. She never would. Then his heart leapt. The Princess had not deliberately neglected or deserted him! She simply had not heard from him and could not find him! He had blamed the Princess for her apparent neglect, when in reality she knew nothing. He was ashamed of himself. He had yielded to debauchery and drunkenness. Well, he would atone and get back to his job. Should he write the Princess again? No. The Japanese and Indians were intercepting his letters. He started. Perhaps they had given her forged reports and sent her home disillusioned. Never mind. Even then, it would be on his report, or supposed report, that she was acting. He must get to work. He must think and plan.
XI
Matthew arose next day saner and clearer-headed and much less sanguine. It was December fifteenth. The Princess, had ​she been in earnest and remembered their meeting, would surely have insisted on seeing him in person and at least greeting him. It must have been curiously easy to make her lose faith. She had in all probability quite forgotten him and his errand. White America had flattered her wealth and beauty.Well, what then? Why, then it was for him to show her and her colleagues that black America counted in the world. But how? How? Then came illumination. He might himself go to Chicago! Without the slightest doubt other observers of the darker world would be on hand. He might go and curb Perigua and watch this meeting.
All the way down to Atlanta he pondered and fidgeted, and decision did not come until, to his great joy, he met Jimmie with his cheerful smile.
“Where’ve you been, you old cheat?” he cried.
Jimmie laughed. “Running to Chicago now.”
“What? Changed your run? Why?”
“Two reasons, First: it’s a good run; second—well,that I’ll show you later. Come on now and sign up for the Klan Special.”
“For the what?”
“The Klan Special. It’s on my run, and they want porters. Come and try it.”
Matthew stood still. It was just the thing. He’d go to Chicago as a porter and watch. Yes—this was precisely what he would do. With Jimmie he went to the harassed Pullman manager,who was only too glad to get so good a porter on such a train as the Klan Special.
“Had a hell of a time. Boys don’t want to wait on the Klan. Damned nonsense. The Klan don’t amount to anything. Chiefly a social stunt and gassing for effect. I will put you Car X466 near the end of the train, between Jimmie’s compartment car and the observation coach. You are bound to make a pile in tips. So long.”
Matthew and Jimmie went out together. Both were overjoyed to see each other. Matthew forgot all about Jimmie’s second reason until he noticed that Jimmie was bubbling over with some secret of his own.
“Have dinner with me,” Jimmie said. “Got something to show you.”
They took the Hunter Street car and rode across town past ​the quiet old campus of Atlanta University and through it and then away out by the new Booker Washington High School. Jimmie stopped at a pretty little cream and green cottage.It was tiny, but neat, and there was a yard in front with roses still blooming. Before Matthew could ask what it all meant, out of the house came a girl and the tiniest of babies. Jimmie set up a shout of explanations.
“Been married a year,” he said. “Married before I knew you, but the wife was working in Chicago and wouldn’t come until I could set up a regular home. But the baby brought her, and I got the home.”
She was a little black, sweet-faced girl with lovely skin, crisp hair, and great black eyes—very practical and very loving, and her earth was quite evidently bounded by Jimmie and the baby. Matthew had never seen so small a baby. It was amorphous and dark red-brown and singularly cunning. They had a hilarious dinner, and Jimmie was at the best of his high humor.
He whispered all his romance to Matthew, while his wife washed the dishes.
“Never thought of marrying a black girl,” he explained. “I was spending all I could make on a ‘high yaller’ in Harlem; when she heard I wasn’t a banker, merchant, or doctor, she cut me so clean, I fell in two pieces and one landed in Chicago. I met Dolly, and gosh! I couldn’t leave her; innocent, sweet,and with sense. O boy, but I got some wife! And that kid!”
Matthew was troubled. Suppose something happened in Chicago or to this train; to this boy with his soul full of joy, and to this sweet-faced little black wife?
The next few days the Klan delegates gathered in Atlanta on special trains from New Orleans and other cities. Jimmie, looking the crowd over with practised eye, prophesied a “hot time,” plenty of gambling and liquor and good tips. Matthew was still disturbed, but Jimmie pooh-poohed.
“They’re all right. Just don’t Jet yourself get mad. Remember that, for the trip, you are just a machine, a plow or a mule, and I—I’m a savings bank for the kid.”
“Jimmie,” said Matthew suddenly, “suppose somebody tried to get back at these Klansmen somehow in Chicago.”
“Nonsense,” said Jimmie carelessly, “niggers dassn’t, Catholics and Jews are too long-headed, and the Klan is too well ​guarded. Just heard them talking about extra police protection.” He was off before Matthew could say more.
Then the rush began. The train was to leave on the twentieth but at three-forty, over the Louisville and Nashville, and for the last half hour before, Matthew had hardly time to think. His and Jimmie’s cars were at the end of the train; other Pullmans followed. In the middle of the train was the diner, and the club car and smoker was far forward.
It was nearly ten o’clock at night before Matthew got his berths made down and came into Jimmie’s car. They started for the diner. Just as they were passing out of the car, a bell rang, but Jimmie paid no attention.
“Come on,” he said, “there’s a flash dame in D who wants too much attention; I don’t trust her. Her husband, or the man she’s with, is up ahead, drunk and gambling. Let her wait.”
In the diner with the other porters, they had a gay time.Jimmie winked at the steward and soon produced a mysterious flask; immediately they were all drinking to “The Baby” and listening to some of the choicest of Jimmie’s stories.
“Let’s go up and see the bunch in the smoker,” said Jimmie when dinner was over. “I hear there’s a big game on.”
Matthew and Jimmie went forward. They were surely having a wild time in the smoker. The drinking and gambling were open, and one could see the character of the crowd—business men,Rotarians, traveling salesmen, clerks—a cross section of American middle-class life.
“I am going back,” said Matthew at last, for he was tired and not particularly interested.
“Be with you in just a minute,” said Jimmie. “I must see this poker hand through. My God, do you see this flush? Glance at my car as you go through and see if it is all right; I'll be back in a jiffy. That fly dame will be yelling for something. Her daddy’s in here linin’ his grave with greenbacks.”
Matthew walked back thinking of Jimmie. That baby! That mother’s face! There were, after all, some strangely beautiful things in life. He walked through Jimmie’s compartment car and saw that all was quiet. Just as he was leaving, however, he heard the bell and saw that, sure enough, Compartment D had rung again. He walked back and knocked lightly.
“Porter!”
Matthew entered.
​“It is stifling in here,” came a voice from the berth. “Please open the window.”
It was warm in Georgia, but the train would soon be in the cooler mountains; nevertheless, Matthew without argument started to open the window at her feet.
“No, this one at my head,” insisted the woman, “and for mercy’s sake, close the door behind you.”
He closed the door softly and then bent over her to raise the window. There came over him at the moment a subtle flash of fear. She was a large woman—opulent and highly colored, and she lay there on her back looking straight up into his eyes. Her breasts were half-covered—one scarcely at all. He could not raise the sash with his hands unaided. He braced his knee on the berth and, using the metal handle for unlocking the upper berth, he bent down hard. The window flew up, but his hand came down lightly on the woman’s bosom. Again came that gust of fear. He glanced down. She did not stir, but looked up at him with slightly closed eyes. For a moment, he caught his breath and his heart hammered. Then suddenly the door behind was flung violently open. The woman’s face changed in a flash. She screamed shrilly as Matthew started back and drew the sheet close about her:
“Get out of here, you black nigger! How dare you touch me! I asked you to raise the window!”
Matthew, terrified, turned, and with one sweep of his arm fiercely pushed aside the man who was entering.The man went down in a heap,and quickly Matthew passed out into the corridor. He started forward to tell Jimmie,but he heard oncoming footsteps and an opening door. Turning, he ran into his own car, got his pistol from the clothes closet, and stepped into the toilet.
There was a long silence, then a cry, a rush of feet, and hurried voices. Then came a tense quiet. Matthew waited and waited until he could bear it no longer. He stepped out into the washroom and listened. Somewhere he could hear a thump—thump—thump. He raised the window and looked out. Something was dragging and bumping beside the car ahead. He heard a noise behind and turned quickly. A porter staggered in. Matthew recoiled, on guard.
“Anything wrong?” he said, thickly.
“They’ve lynched Jimmie,” said the porter.
​Matthew sank suddenly to the lounge. My God! It was Jimmie he had heard coming. He sat down and vomited. He stood up again, staggered to the door, and fainted away.
XII
It was morning. Matthew opened his eyes slowly and stared at the high white walls. There were two blurs before him, one on either side. Gradually, as he shut his eyes and opened them again, they resolved themselves into two faces. Then he knew them. One was Perigua; the other was Jimmie’s little black wife. Where was he? He strove to sit up. He was in a hospital. He wanted to rage. He wanted to tell Perigua and everybody that he was a murderer. Poor Jimmie, poor little wife and baby! Perigua—revenge! All these things he strove to say, but the nurse glided by and stopped him. She gave him something to drink, and he fell asleep.
Three days later he left the General Hospital, and he and Perigua and Jimmie’s wife met together in a big brown house on Fourth Street. He poured out his story, and they listened. Perigua said nothing. But the little wife put her hand timidly in his and said: “You are not to blame. It was not your fault.” And then she added: “We had the funeral here in Cincinnati. I wish you could have been there. There were beautiful flowers. But they would not open the coffin. They would not let me see his face.” And she repeated, looking up at Matthew: “They did not let me see his face.”
Then Perigua said:
“He didn’t have no face.”
There rose a shriek in Matthew’s throat. It struggled and surged, and broke to horrid silence within him. The hot tears burned in his eyes. Something died in Matthew that day. He put all his savings into the little mother’s hand and pushed her gently out the door.
“Good-by,” he said, and “God forgive me!”
Perigua sat down and smoked, and silently showed him newspaper clippings.
Christmas had passed. The Klan was holding its great meeting in Chicago, and the papers were full of news about it and of pictures of the members. They seemed to be making a new campaign against the Catholic Church; they had apparently ​dropped the fight on Jews; but they were concentrating on a campaign against colored peoples throughout the world, and the world was listening to them. Moreover, they were adroitly seeking to pit the dark peoples against each other—Japanese against Chinese; Indians against Negroes; Negroes against Arabs; Mulattoes against Blacks, They even had certain Japanese and other Asiatic guests!
“That special train will return in triumph next Monday,” said Perigua finally, looking at Matthew, gloomily.
Matthew brooded. “We must do something, Perigua,” he said; “we must do something—something startling.”
Perigua bent forward and glowed. “Something to make the world sit up!”
“Yes,” said Matthew, “and my plan is this: I’m going to write and demand a meeting of the national officers of the Porters’ Union in Chicago. I'll attend and tell my story of Jimmie’s lynching and demand a nation-wide strike of porters until somebody is arrested for this crime.”
Perigua’s face fell. “Hell!” he said.
XII
Worn and nervous, Matthew went to the Chicago meeting of the porters. He talked as he had never talked before, in that room with barred doors. With streaming eyes he told the story of Jimmie, of the little black wife, of the baby. He went over the events of that terrible night. He offered to testify in court, if called upon. The porters listened, tense and sympathetic;but they were silent and uneasy over the strike. It was “too risky”; they would “lose their jobs”; “Filipinos would be imported”; white men “at a living wage and no tips” would replace them: the nation would not stand being “held up” by Negroes, and white labor would not back them. “Do you think the white railway unions would raise a finger? I guess not!” said one.
No—a general Pullman strike would never do. Public opinion among Negroes, however, forced them to some action. While the white newspapers had said little about the gruesome lynching, and that little dismissed and excused it because of “an atrocious attack upon a woman,” the colored world knew of it to its farthest regions. Once the matter had come up in ​the Klan Convention and a brazen-throated orator had declared that this was the punishment which would always be meted out to the “black wretches who dared attack Southern womanhood”!
The plan finally agreed on was the utmost Matthew could extract from the union. It confined itself to a porters’ strike on the Klan Special. The train was to arrive in Cincinnati at eight at night on the thirtieth of December and leave at eight forty-five. Before the train came in and while it was in the station, the porters were to make up all the berths they could; at eight-forty all the porters were to leave their cars and march out of the train shed to the main waiting-room; there they were to declare a strike, refusing to accompany farther a train on which one of their number, an innocent man, had been lynched, under atrocious circumstances.
Matthew hurried back to Cincinnati to perfect the plans there. Perigua had been in Chicago, but he kept out of the way. No one seemed to know him there, but in his two or three fugitive visits to Matthew he assured him that he was working underground and making sure that none of the porters should see him. He promised to meet Matthew in Cincinnati.
With great fanfare of trumpets and waving of flags, the Klan Special started south. The porters were grim and silent. One of the organizers of the union had a hurried meeting with them just as they left, and on the way down, there were frequent conferences. The train was to leave Cincinnati without a single porter. There was little porter’s work to be done at night except making the remaining berths, and this would have to be done by the conductors and the passengers themselves.
It was not, after all, a very bold scheme, or one calling for great courage. Matthew felt how small a gesture it was, and yet just now any protest was something; he knew that even this might not have been feasible, had it not been helped by the fact that none of the porters wanted to go south on this train. Fear, therefore, pushed them to strike for principle when under other circumstances many might have refused. It was extremely unlikely, too, that any porters who were laying over in Cincinnati, or who lived there, would volunteer to take the strikers’ places. As the diner was detached at Cincinnati, the waiters would not have to take a stand. They were to disappear quietly, so as not to be asked to serve as porters.
​Perigua arrived in Cincinnati three hours before the Klan Special was due. He and Matthew sat again in the big gloomy room on Fourth Street.
Matthew looked strained and thin, but he was sanguine. He detailed his activities.
“Everything’s all right here,” he said. “I think it’s going to make a big sensation. Newspapers will eat it up, and the whole of colored Cincinnati is whispering.”
Perigua listened in silence and then laughed aloud.
“Well, what’s the matter?” asked Matthew, testily.
“They’ve double-crossed you, you boob,” said Perigua at last.
“Nonsense—they can’t as long as the men stick.”
“Sure—‘as long as.’ Know what I’ve been doing in Chicago?”
“No—what?”
“Working for the Klan. Private messenger and stool pigeon for Green, the Grand Dragon. Know all the big ikes—Therwald, Bates, Evans. Say, they knew of this strike from a dozen pigeons before it was planned. They passed the word to Uncle George. It’ll never come off.”
“But, say—”
“Shut up—come with me.”
Matthew was disturbed but walked silently with Perigua along Fourth and then over and west on Carlisle Avenue a couple of blocks, past old brick buildings, smoke-grimed over the tawdry decorations of a rich, dead generation.
Perigua pointed out a certain large house.
“Go in,” he said. “You'll find forty porters lodging there. ‘Strike’ is the password. They’re new men gathered quietly from all over the South, expenses paid, ready to scab at a moment’s notice. Tell ’em you’re inspecting the bunch and flash this badge on them.”
It was as Perigua said. Matthew almost staggered out of the house, with tears in his eyes.
“I don’t care,” he cried to Perigua. “We'll strike anyhow. The men will stick, I know. Let the scabs come—they’ll get one beating!”
“Piffle! They’ll never strike. Not a man will budge when they hear of that bunch waiting for their jobs, and they’ll hear of it before they are well out of Chicago. Uncle George will see to that.”
​“But what can we do, Perigua?” We must do something—God! We must!”
“Sure. Listen. Two can play at double-crossing. I brought Green news of the strike—”
“You?”
“Yes—he heard it from a dozen others. And then, for full measure, I lied about how Chicago Negroes planned a riot as the Klan left. He swallowed both tales and gave me a thousand dollars to push both schemes along; then he tipped off the Pullman Company and the police.”
“But it wasn’t true about the riot?”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“Hung around, filled him with tips and fairy tales, and finally beat it here!”
“What for?”
Perigua quickly straightened up. “Good-by,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Where are you going?” Matthew asked.
Perigua glared. “I will tell you. I’m taking the next train south,” he said with blazing eyes. Matthew stared.
“But—” he expostulated. “The Klan train will not arrive for two hours yet!”
“I shall need those hours,” said Perigua.
“And you will not see the strike?”
“No—because there won’t be no strike.”
Matthew gripped Perigua’s arm with his own nervous, shaking fingers.
“What’s your plan, Perigua?”
Perigua faced him, speaking slowly and distinctly: “I used to run on this route from Chicago to Florida through Cumberland Gap. Did you see the Gap when you came up?”
Matthew shook his head.
“Well, you come down the valley from Winchester and Richmond and rush into the hills; suddenly you meet the mountains, and diving through one great crag, the tunnel emerges as from a rock wall on to a high trestle which spans the Powell River! Hm! Great sight! All right. Now for the great Pullman strike!”
“But Perigua—what have we to do with—with scenery? And suppose the cowards don’t strike?”
​Matthew knew the answer before he asked. He saw the heavy black bag which Perigua carried so carefully. He knew the answer. Perigua’s mind was made up. He was mad—a desperate fanatic. What—
“Scenery!” laughed Perigua. “Listen, fool: we’re mocked, betrayed and double-crossed, your race are born idiots and cowards! Well, I’m going this alone. Get me? Alone! When the Klan Special sees that scenery—when it reaches that trestle, the trestle ain’t going to be there!”
“What is going to become of it?” Matthew asked slowly, talking against time and trying to think.
“I am going to blow it up,” said Perigua.
“But how can you do it? Where can you stand? How can you fire any charge without elaborate wiring to get yourself far enough away?”
“I am not going to get away,” said Perigua. “I am going to sit right on that trestle, and I am going to hell with it.”
They looked each other straight in the eye.
“What are you going to do about it?” whispered Perigua.
Matthew hesitated. “Nothing—” he answered slowly.
Perigua approached Matthew, and there was danger in his eyes.
“You'll peach?” he whispered.
“I'll never betray you, Perigua.”
“Well, what will you do?”
Matthew was silent.
“Well, speak, man,” growled Perigua.
“I’ll keep still,” said Matthew.
“All right, keep still. But listen, man. It’s going to be done, and if you can’t be a man, don’t be a damned tale-bearing dog!”
He started away. Matthew’s thoughts raced. Here was the answer to that sneer of the Japanese. The world would awaken tomorrow to the revolt of black America. His head swam.
He ran after Perigua and gripped his arm. He was all a-tremble. He whispered in Perigua’s ear.
“I don’t believe what you have said. I don’t believe the porters will back down before the scabs, but if they do—”
“Well, if they do, what?” asked Perigua.
“Wait,” said Matthew. “How will the world know that this wasn’t an accident rather than—revenge?”
​“I’ve got posters that I printed myself.”
“Give them to me.”
“What for?”
“If the porters strike, I’ll destroy them. But if they don’t strike, I’ll scab with them on the Klan Special—and I'll go to hell with you.”
“By the living Christ,” said Perigua, “you’ve got guts!”
“No,” said Matthew, “I am a coward. I dare not live.”
Perigua gripped his hand.
“I’ve searched through ten millions,” he said, “and found only one who dared. Now I am going. Here! I’ll give you half the handbills.”
He thrust a bundle into Matthew’s hand.
“Placard the cars with these after midnight. And, say—oh, here it is—here’s a letter.”
XIV
The porters’ strike was over before it began. The officials had early wind of the plan, and by the time the Special reached Indianapolis, rumors of the host of strike breakers, ready and willing to work, reached the porters’ ears and were industriously circulated by the conductors and stool-pigeons. There was a moment of strained expectancy as the train drew into the depot. Reporters came rushing out, and numbers of colored people who had learned of something unusual stood about. In the waiting-room stood a crowd of porters in new uniforms, together with several Pullman officials, and an unusual number of policemen who bustled about and scattered the crowds.
“Come—clear the way—move on!”
“Where are you going?” one of them asked Matthew, suspiciously. Leaning by the grill and straining his eyes, Matthew had waited in vain for the porters to leave their cars and march out according to the plan agreed on. Not a porter stirred. He saw them standing in their places, some laughing and talking, but most of them silent and grim. Matthew went ashen with pain and anger. He beckoned to some of the men he knew and had talked to. They ignored him.
He leaned dizzily against the cold iron, then started for the gate. A policeman accosted him, roughly seizing his arm. ​“I’m joining this train as porter,” he explained. “I’ve been on sick leave.” A Pullman official stepped forward.
“I don’t know anything about this,” he began.
But Matthew spied his conductor.
“Reporting for duty, Cap,” he said.
The conductor grinned. “Thought you were leading a strike,” he sneered, and then turning to the official he said: “Good porter—came up with me. I was just coming to get an extra man for the smoker.”
“All right.”
And Matthew passed the gate. He spoke to not a single porter, and none spoke to him. All of them avoided each other. They had failed—they had been defeated without a fight.
“We're damn cowards,” muttered Matthew as he climbed aboard.
“Any man’s a coward in midwinter when he’s got a wife, a mortgage, two children in school, and only one job in sight,” answered the old porter who followed him.
“Good,” growled Matthew. “Let’s all go to hell.”
An hour late the Klan Special crawled out of Cincinnati and headed South. The railroad and Pullman officials sighed in relief and laughed. The colored crowd faded away and laughed too, but with different tone.
Matthew donned his uniform slowly, as in a trance. He could not yet realize that his strike had utterly failed. He was numb with the day’s experience and still weak from illness. He shrank from work in the smoker with that uproarious, drunken crowd of gamblers. The conductor consented to put him on the last car instead, bringing the willing man from that car to the larger tips of the smoker.
“We've dropped the observation,” said the conductor, “and we’ve got a private car on the end with four compartments and a suite. They’re mostly foreign guests of the Klan, and they keep pretty quiet. They are going down to see the South. Afraid you won’t make much in tips—but then again you may.” And he went forward.
Matthew went back and walked again through the horror of Jimmie’s murder. He entered the private car. There was a reception room and a long corridor, but the passengers had apparently all retired. Matthew sat down in the lounge and took from his pocket the package which Perigua had given ​him; with it was the letter. He looked at it in surprise. He knew immediately whose it was; he saw the coronet; he saw the long slope of the beautiful handwriting; but he did not open it. Slowly he laid it aside with a bitter smile. It could have for him now neither good news nor bad, neither praise nor inquiry, neither disapproval nor cold criticism. No matter what it said, it had come too late. He was at the end of his career. He had started high and sunk to the depths, and now he would close the chapter.
In the first miles of the journey toward Winchester, Matthew was grim; cold and clear ran his thoughts.
“Selig der, den Er in Siegesglänze findet.”
He was going out in triumph. He was dying for Death. The world would know that black men dared to die. There came the flash of passing towns with stops here and there to discharge passengers; he helped the porter on the next car, which was overloaded; he was hurrying, helping, and lifting as was his wont. And hurrying, helping, and lifting, he flew by towns and lights. Then coming suddenly back from beneath this dream of loads—from the everyday things—he tried to remember the Exaltation—the Great Thing. What was the Great Thing? And suddenly he remembered. He was going to kill these people. Just a little while and they would be twisted corpses—dead—and some worse than dead—Crippled, torn and maimed.
The dark horror of the deed fell hot upon him. He had not seen it before—he had not wholly realized it. Yet he must go on. He could not stop. What had other men thought when they murdered in a great cause? Suddenly he seemed to know. It was not the dead who paid—it was the living; not the killed, but the Killer, who knew and suffered. This was Hell, and he was in it. He must stay in it. He must go through with it. But, Christ! the horror, the infamy, the flaming pain of the thing!
And the world flew by—always, always the world flew by; now in a great blurred rush of sound; now in a white, soft Sweep of space and flash of time. Darkness ascended to the Stars, and distance that was sight became sound.
It was War. In all ages men had gone forth to kill. But never—never, from Armageddon to the Argonne, had they carried so bitter reasons, so bloody a guerdon. All the enslaved, ​all the raped, all the lynched, all the “jim-crowed” marched in ranks behind him, bloody with rope and club and iron, crimson with stars and nights. He was going to fight and die for vengeance and freedom. There would be no march of music and stream of banners and whine of vast-voiced trumpets, but it was war, war, war, and he the grim lone fighter.
But the pity of it—the crippled and hurt—the pain, the great pricks and flashes of pain, the wild screams in the night; the grinding and crushing of body and bone and flesh and limb—and his sweat oozed and dripped in the cold night. He cowered in that dim and swaying room and shook with ague. He was afraid. He was deathly afraid. If he could turn back! If he had but never fallen in with this crazy plan! If he could only die now, quickly and first! Yet he knew he would not flinch. He would go through with it all to the last horror. The cold, white thing within him gripped him—held him hard and fast with all his writhing. He would go through.
The outlines of mountains with snow lay sprinkled here and there. The lights on hill and hollow—on long shining rails and piling shadows paused, came back and forward, curved, and disappeared. He stood stiffly and heard the gay laughter of the smoker, and one shrill voice floated back with war of answering banter.
“Laugh no more!” he whispered, and then his thoughts went racing down to cool places, to summer suns and gay, gleaming eyes. The cars reeled forward, gathered themselves, became one great speeding catapult, and headed toward the last hills. Beside them a little river, silver, whistled softly to the night.
He collected his few pairs of shoes and set them carefully down before him, arranging them mechanically; he smiled—the shoes of the dead—and he strangled as he smiled; strong, big, expensive brogans; soft, sleek, slim calf; patent leather pumps with gaitered sides; slippers of gray suede.
Slowly he got out his shoe brushes, and then paused. His heart throbbed unmercifully and then was cold and still. It was ten o’clock. He put out his hand and felt the letter. Tomorrow she would hear from him. Tomorrow they would know that black America had its men who dared—whose faces were toward the light and who could pay the price.
He laid the letter on the table unopened and took up the rest of the package, the bundle of manifestoes which Perigua ​had prepared and printed himself. Slowly Matthew read the little six-by-eight poster. It was rhodomontade. It was melodrama, but it told its awful story. Matthew read it and signed his name beneath Perigua’s,
VENGEANCE IS MINE
THE WRECK TONIGHT IS TO AVENGE THE LYNCHING OF AN INNOCENT BLACK MAN, JIMMIE GILES, ON THIS TRAIN, DECEMBER 16, 1926, BY MEN WHO SEEK OUR DISFRANCHISEMENT AND SLAVERY.
MURDER FOR MURDERERS
MIGUEL PERIGUA
MATTHEW TOWNS
Matthew folded the posters slowly and held them in his hands.
Murder and death. That was his plan. It did not seem so awful as he faced it. Except by the shedding of blood there was no remission of Sin. Despite deceptive advance, the machinery was being laid to strangle black folk in America and in the world. They must fight or die. There was no use in talk or argument. Here was the challenge. An atrocious lynching; an open, publicly advertised movement to take the first step back to Negro slavery. Kill the men who led it. Kill them openly, publicly, and spectacularly, and advertise the killing and tell why!
Only one thing else, and that was: he must die as they died. It must be no coward’s act which brought death to others and escape to himself. He shifted his pistol and pulled it out. It was a big forty-five and loaded with five great bullets. If the wreck did not kill him, this would. He was ready to die. This was all he could do for the cause. He was not worth any other effort—he had tried and failed. He had once a great dream of world alliance in the service of a woman he had almost dared to love.
He laughed aloud. She would not have looked twice even on Dr. Matthew Towns, world-renowned surgeon, save as she saw in him a specimen and a promise. And on a servant and a porter—a porter. He thought of the porters, riding to death. Let the cowards ride. Then he thought of their wives and babies, of Jimmie’s wife and child. What difference? No—no—​no! He would not think. That way lay madness. He rushed into the next car.
“Got—nothing to do,” he stammered. “Will you lend me some shoes to black?”
“Will I?” answered the astonished and sweating porter. “I sure will! My God! Looks like these birds of mine was centipedes. Never did see so many shoes in mah life. Help yo’self, brother, but careful of the numbers, careful of the numbers.”
Matthew carried a dozen pairs to his car. He shuddered as he slowly and meditatively and meticulously sorted them for cleaning and blacking. They would not need these shoes, but he must keep busy; he must keep busy—until midnight. Then he would silently distribute his manifestoes throughout the train. At one o’clock the train would shoot from its hole to the high and narrow trestle. There was only one great deed that he could do for her, for the majority of men, and for the world, and that was to die tonight in a great red protest against wrong. And Matthew hummed a tune, “Oh, brother, you must bow so low!”
Then again he saw the letter lying there. Then again came sudden boundless exaltation. He was riding the wind of a golden morning, the sense of live, rising, leaping horseflesh between his knees, the rush of tempests through his hair, and the pounding of blood—the pounding and pounding of iron and blood as the train roared through the night. He felt his great soul burst its bonds and his body rise in the stirrups as the Hounds of God screamed to the black and silver hills. In both scarred hands he seized his sword and lifted it to the circle of its swing.
Vengeance was his. With one great blow he was striking at the Heart of Hell. His trembling hands flew across the shining shoes, and tears welled in his eyes. On, on, up and on! to kill and maim and hate! to throw his life against the smug liars and lepers, hypocrites and thieves, who leered at him and mocked him! Lay on—the last great whirling crash of Hell ... and then his heart stopped. Then it was that he noticed the white slippers.
He had seen them before, dimly, unconsciously, out at the edge of the circle of shoes, two little white slippers—two slippers that moved. He did not raise his eyes, but with half-​lowered lids and staring pupils, he looked at the slippers—two slippers, far in the rear. They were two white slippers, and he could not remember bringing them in. They stood on the outermost edge of the forest of shoes—he had not seen them move, but he knew they had moved. He was acutely, fearfully conscious of their movement, and his heart stopped.
He saw but the toes, but he knew those slippers—the smooth and shining, high-heeled white kid, embroidered with pearls. Above were silken ankles, and then as he leaped suddenly to his feet and his brushes clattered down, he heard the thin light swish of silk on silk and knew she was standing there before him—the Princess of Bwodpur. His soul clamored and fought within him, raged to know how and where and when, and here of all wild places! He saw her eyes widen with curiosity.
“You—here—Mr. Towns,” she said and raised half-involuntarily her jeweled, hanging hand. He did not speak—he could not. She dropped her hand, hesitated a moment, and then, stepping forward: “Have I—offended you in some way?” she said, with that old half haughty gesture of command, and yet with a certain surprise and pain in her voice.
Matthew stiffened and stood at attention. He touched his cap and said slowly: “I am—the porter on this car,” and then again he stood still, silent and yet conscious of every inch of her, from her jeweled feet to the soft clinging of her dress, to the gentle rise of her little breasts, the gold bronze of her bare neck and glowing cheeks, and the purple of her hair. She could not be as beautiful as she always seemed to him—she could not be as beautiful to other eyes. But he caught himself and bit hard on his teeth. He would not forget for a moment that he was a servant and that she knew that he knew he was. But she only said, “Yes?” and waited.
He spoke rapidly. “Your Royal Highness must excuse any apparent negligence. I have received no word from you except one letter, and that only tonight. Indeed—I have not yet read that. I hope I have been of some service. I hope that you and his Excellency have learned something of my people, of their power and desert. I wish I could serve you further and—better, but I can not—”
The Princess sat down on the couch and stared at him with faint surprise in her face. She had listened to what he said, never moving her eyes from his face.
​“Why?” she said again, gently.
“Because,” he said, “I am—going away.”
“Have I offended you in some way?” she asked again.
“I am the offender,” he said. “I am all offense. See,” he said in sudden excitement, “this is my mission.” And he handed her one of Perigua’s manifestoes. The Princess read it. He looked on her as she read.
As she read, wrinkling her brows in perplexity, he himself seemed to awake from a nightmare. My God! He was carrying the Princess to death! How in heaven’s name had he landed in this predicament? Where was the impulse, the reasoning, the high illumination that seemed to point to a train wreck as the solution of the color problems of the world? Was he mad—had he gone insane?
Whatever he was, his life was done, and done far differently from his last wild dream. There was no escape. He must stop the train. Of course. He must stop it instantly. But how was he to explain to the world his knowledge? He could not pretend a note of warning without producing it, and even then they might ignore it. He could not give details to the conductor lest he betray Perigua.
He did not consciously ask himself the one question: why not let the wreck come after all? He knew why. For a moment he thought of suicide and a dying note. No—they might ignore the warning and think him merely crazy. Already they were flying to make up lost time. No, he must live and spare no effort even to confession until he had stopped that train. First, warning—as a last resort, the bell-rope—and then—jail.
At any cost he must save the Princess and her great cause—God! They might even think her the criminal if anything happened on this train of death. And then he sensed by the silken rustle of garments that the Princess had finished reading and had arisen.
“Read my letter,” she said.
His hands shook as he read. She had received and read his reports. They were admirable and enlightening. Her own limited experiences confirmed them in all essentials. The Japanese had joined her and was quite converted. They realized the tremendous possibilities of the American Negro, but they both agreed with Mr. Towns that there was no question of revolt or violence. It was rather the slow, sure, gathering growth of ​power and vision, expanding and uniting with the thought of the wider, better world.
But she could not understand why he did not answer her specific questions and refused her repeated invitations to call. She wanted to thank him personally, and she had so many questions—so many, many questions to ask. She had twice postponed her return home in order to see him. Now she must go, and curiously enough, she was going to the Ku Klux Klan meeting in Chicago at the invitation of the Japanese, and for reasons she would explain. Would Mr. Towns meet her there? She would be at the Drake and always at home to him. She sensed, as did the Japanese, subtle propaganda, to discount in advance any possible colored world unity, in this invitation to attend this meeting and ride on this special train. They were all the more glad to accept, as he would readily understand. Would he be so good as to wire, if he received this, to the New Willard, Washington?
Matthew was dumb and bewildered. He could not fathom the intricacies of the tactics of the Japanese. His reports had been passed to the Princess, and yet all her letters to him stopped save this. Or had it been Perigua who had rifled his mail? Or the Indians?
But what mattered all this now? It was too late. Everything was too late. Around him like a silent wall of earth and time ranged the symbolic shoes—big and little, slippers and boots, old, new, severe, elegant. He spoke hurriedly. There was no alternative. She had to know all. Time pressed. It was nearly one o’clock, and a cold tremor gripped slowly about his heart. He listened—glanced back at the door. God! If the conductor should come! Then he hurried on.
“I shall stop the wreck; then I am going—away!”
The Princess gave a little gasp and came toward him. He started nervously and listened.
“I must not stay,” he said hurriedly, and in a lower voice: “This train will surely be wrecked unless I stop it. I did not dream you were aboard.”
She made a little motion with her hands. “Wrecked? This train?” she said, and then more slowly, “Oh! Perigua’s plan?” Then she stared at him. “And you—on it!”
He smiled. “Wrecked, and I—on it.” Then he added slowly: “It was to be a proof—to his Excellency and you. And it ​was to be more than that: it was revenge.” And he told her hurriedly of Jimmie’s death.
“But you must stop it. It is a mad thing to do. There are sO many sane, fine paths. I was so mistaken. I had thought of you as a nation of outcasts to be hurled forward as shock troops, but you are a nation of modern people. You surely will not follow Perigua?”
“No,” he said quietly, “I will not. But let me tell you—”
Then she rose quietly and moved toward him. “And—Perigua must be—betrayed?”
“Never.”
“And if—” She stared at him. “And if—”
“Jail,” he said quietly, “for long years.”
She made a little noise like a sob controlled, but his quick ear caught another sound. “The conductor,” he whispered. “Destroy these handbills for me.” Quickly he stepped out into the corridor.
“Captain,” he said hurriedly, “captain—this train must be stopped—there is danger.”
“What do you mean? Is it them damned porters again?”
“No—not they—but, I say—there is danger. Where’s the train conductor?”
The Pullman conductor stared at him hard. “He’s up in the third car,” he said nervously, for it had been a hard trip. “Come with me.” Matthew followed.
They stepped in on the conductor in an empty compartment, where he was burrowing in a pile of tickets and stubs.
“Mr. Gray, the porter has a story for you.”
“Spit it out—and hurry up,” growled the conductor. The train flew on, and faster flew the time.
“You must stop the train,” said Matthew.
The conductor glanced up. “What’s the matter with you? Are you drunk?”
“I was never so sober.”
“What the hell then is the matter?”
“For God’s sake stop the train! There’s danger ahead.”
“Stop the train, already two hours late? You blithering idiot! Have all you black porters gone crazy?”
Matthew stepped out of the compartment and threw his weight on the bell-rope. The conductor swore and struck him aside, but there was a jolt, a low, long, grinding roar, and ​quickly the train slowed down. The conductor seized Matthew just as some one pounded on the window. A red light flashed ahead. Soon a sweating man rushed aboard.
“Thank God!” he gasped. “That was a narrow squeak. I was afraid I was too late to flag you. You must have got warning before my signal was lighted. There’s been an explosion on the trestle. Rails are torn up for a dozen yards.”
XV
Matthew Towns blackened shoes. All night long he blackened shoes, cleaning them, polishing them very carefully, and arranging the laces. He was working in a standard Pullman at the forward end of the train, having been hurriedly transferred from the private car after the incident of the night. He gathered more shoes and blackened them, placing them carefully, in the graying dawn, under the appropriate berths. He arranged clean towels in the washrooms and tested the soap cocks. He saw that the toilets were clean and in order, and he carefully dusted the corridor and wiped the windows.
All the time there were two unobtrusive strangers who kept him always in sight. He paid no apparent attention to them but waited, watch in hand, as the train approached Knoxville Some one asked the time.
“Six-thirty,” he whispered.
“We're pretty late.”
“Yes, on account of that delay on the road.”
“When do we get in Knoxville?”
“About eight thirty, I imagine. Breakfast will be served as soon as we arrive.”
At last he went to some of the berths and pulled the lower sheet gently and then insistently.
“One hour to Knoxville,” he said; and again and again. “One hour to Knoxville.”
The car aisles began to fill with half-dressed travelers. He brought new bundles of towels and began to make up vacant berths. He worked rapidly and deftly. There was much confusion, and always the two unobtrusive men were near. Some of the returning passengers found their seats in order. Others did not and made sharp remarks, but Matthew pacified them, ​guided them to resting-places, and began to collect the luggage and to brush the clothes.
The sweat poured off him, but he worked swiftly. When they stopped in the depot, he was at the step in coat and cap, wooden, deferential: “Thank you, sir. All right here, Cap.”
They moved out for the swift three-hour run to Atlanta. He finished the other berths, brushed more passengers, stowed dirty linen, swept, dusted, and guided passengers to the dining-car attached at Knoxville.
The train glided into the Atlanta station.
And then it came.
“Towns, step this way—gentleman wants to see you.”
He walked back through the train into the lounge of the private car again. On the table lay something under a sheet. About the door, several of the passengers were crowded.
As Matthew entered the car he saw in the vestibule, and for the first time since one awful night, a well-remembered figure—a woman, high-colored, big and boldly handsome, with her lowered eyelids and jeweled hands. Beside her was a weak-looking man, faultlessly tailored, with an old and dissipated face. They were in the waiting throng. The woman looked up. Her eyes widened suddenly, and then quietly she fainted away.
Matthew faltered but an instant and then walked steadily on. He entered the room. The conductor was there, the two quiet men, and a grave-faced stranger. And then came the Princess, the Japanese, and several other guests. They all sat, but Matthew stood silent, his uniform spotless, his head up.
One of the strangers spoke.
“Your name is—”
“Matthew Towns.”
“You are a porter?”
"Yes"
“The porters had planned a strike in Cincinnati?”
“Yes"
“Why didn’t you strike?”
“I was going to, but I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because the others decided not to—and because I heard that this train was going to be wrecked.”
“By the porters?”
“Certainly not!”
​“By whom?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Who told you?”
“I will not say.”
“Did the other porters hear this?”
“No, I was the only one.”
“How do you know?”
“I am sure.”
“When did you hear this?”
“Just before the train started.”
“From Chicago ”
“No, from Cincinnati.”
“But you were in Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“And planned the strike there?”
“Yes. I helped to.”
“What did you do when you heard this rumor?”
“I offered to go as porter.”
“You offered to go on a train that you knew was going to be wrecked?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Well—a porter—my friend—was lynched on this train a week ago. I urged the strike as a protest. When it failed—nothing mattered.”
“Did you intend to stop the wreck?”
“At first, no.”
“And you—you changed your mind?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I cannot tell.”
“How did you think you could prevent it?”
“Well—I did prevent it.”
“Who told you about this plot?”
“I will not tell.”
“Did this man tell you?”
They drew the sheet from Perigua’s dead face. Beneath the sheet his body looked queer, humped and broken. But his face was peaceful and smiling. Matthew’s face was stone.
“No.”
“Do you know him?”
​“No.”
“Did you ever see him before?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In the office of the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in the Sherman Hotel, Chicago.”
There was a stir among the crowd. A big man with a flat, broad face and little eyes pressed forward and viewed the corpse.
“It may be Sam,” he said. “Were any papers or marks found on him?”
“Nothing—absolutely nothing. Not even laundry marks.”
“I’m almost sure that’s Sam Johnson, who acted as messenger in our Chicago office. If it is,” he spoke deliberately, “I’ll vouch for him. Excellent character—wouldn’t hurt a flea.” He glanced at Matthew.
The inquisitor turned back to Matthew.
“Who told you of this wreck?”
“I will not tell.
“Why not?”
“I take all the blame.”
“Do you realize your position? You stand between high reward and criminal punishment.”
“I know it.”
“Who told you of the wreck?”
And then like sudden thunder came the low, clear voice of the Princess:
“I told him!”
XVI
Circuit Judge Windom, presiding over the criminal court of Cook County, Illinois, sat in his chambers with a frown on his face. Beside him sat his son, the gifted young medical student, home from the holidays.
“Certainly I remember Towns,” said the younger man. “He was a fine fellow—first-rate brains, fine athlete, and a gentleman. If it had not been for his color, he’d have been sure to make a big reputation, but they drove him out of school. Somebody had kicked about Negroes in the women’s clinics. Towns wouldn’t beg—he slapped the Dean’s face, I heard, and left.”
​“H’m—violent, even then.”
“But, my God, father, Towns was a man—not just a colored man. Why, you remember how he beat me for the Mitchel Prize?”
“Yes, yes—but all that does not clear up this mystery. I can get neither head nor tail of it. Here is an atrocious railroad wreck planned on a leading railway. Half an hour more, and there would have been perhaps five hundred corpses strewn in the river. Awful! Dastardly! The explosion was bungled and premature. The trestle was left intact, but enough damage was done to have made the derailing of the train inevitable had it rushed through the tunnel unwarned. Section hands discovered at the last moment the broken rails and a dead man lying across them. They start to signal too late, but before they start Towns warns the conductor; when the conductor hesitates, Towns himself stops the train. Possibly the signal man might have stopped it eventually, but Towns actually stopped it.
“Now, how did Towns know? Was this the striking porters’ plot? Towns and their leaders declare that, far from dreaming of this, they would not quit work for an ordinary strike, and certainly they would hardly have ridden on a train which they expected to be wrecked. An Indian Princess declares that she told Towns of the plot, and taking refuge in her diplomatic immunity, refuses to answer further questions. The English Embassy, which represents her country abroad, backs her reputation, vouches for her integrity, and promises her immediate withdrawal from the country. The dead Negro found on the trestle remains unidentified. Indeed there is no evidence of his connection with the wreck. The chief of the Klan thinks he recognizes the man as a former messenger, vouches for his character, and doubts his connection with any plot; he considers him a victim rather than a conspirator. Says, as of course we know, that Negroes never conspire. And now comes this extraordinary story of Towns himself.”
“Well, at any rate, Towns wouldn’t lie!” said the son.
“But the point is, he won’t tell the truth; and why? It looks a suspicious. Some red-handed rascals are going free.”
“What does Towns say?”
“He says that he did not plan this outrage; that when he ​knew that it was planned he assented to it and determined to run on this train and to die in the wreck. Then, for some reason changing his mind and being unable to contemplate the death of all these passengers, he gave warning of the plot. He says that he had met the Princess abroad, had told her of his trouble in the medical school and elicited her sympathy and interest; that he had no knowledge that she was on the train, and no idea she was in the country. He then told her the danger of the train and his dilemma, and in generous sympathy, she had finally sought to direct the blame of guilty fore- knowledge to herself.
“In truth, and this he swears before God, the Princess of Bwodpur had not the faintest knowledge of the plot of wrecking the train until he himself told her five minutes before he stopped the train. He begs that she be entirely exonerated, despite her Quixotic attempt to save him, and that he alone bear the full blame and suffer the full penalty.”
“Extraordinary—but if Towns says it’s true, it’s true. It may not be the whole truth, but it contains no falsehood.”
“Well, it is full of discrepancies and suspicious omissions. Good heavens! A woman says she knew a train was to be wrecked, and yet rides on it, and tells the porter and not the conductor. The porter declares that she did not know or tell him, but that somebody else did; and yet he rides. A man found dead may be the wrecker, but the head of the Ku Klux Klan and one of the threatened party refuses to believe him guilty. The porter refuses to tell where he got his warning and prefers jail rather than reward.”
“How did the case get to your court, father?”
“More complications. When Towns was arraigned at Atlanta, the passengers of the Klan Special came forward with a big purse to reward him for his services, and a sharp lawyer. Towns refused the money, but the court listened to the lawyer and held that no crime had been committed by Towns in its jurisdiction.
“Thereupon the District Attorney of this district sought indictment against Towns, charging that the Pullman porter strike was concocted in Chicago and that the wreck was part of the conspiracy. Towns denied this, but offered to come here without extradition papers. The District Attorney expected ​the help and support of the Pullman Company and the rail-roads, None of them lifted a finger.
“There is another curious and unexplained angle. You know there was a lynching on that Klan train. There was some dispute as to whether it took place in Georgia or Tennessee. Nothing was ever done about it, not even a coroner’s inquest. Well, I have it on the best authority that when the woman who alleged the attack saw Towns face to face at the informal questioning on the train, she fainted away.
“I have tried to get in touch with her and her husband, who is Therwald, a high Klansman. They deny all knowledgeand refuse to appear as witnesses. As residents of another state, I can’t compel them. Moreover, I find that they have only recently been married, although the newspaper reports of the lynching refer to them as man and wife occupying the same compartment. Now what’s behind all this?
“Well, he was indicted for conspiracy and pleaded guilty. He still declared that the porters’ union and the Indian Princess knew nothing of the proposed wreck. He admitted that he did and further admitted that he consented to it and started on the journey determined not to betray the arch-conspirators, and then changed his mind and stopped the wreck. Now what can you make of such a Hell’s broth?”
“I’m puzzled, father.”
“The Princess of Bwodpur herself has come to me, stoppingen route, as she explained, to Seattle and India. Evidently agreat lady and extraordinarily beautiful, despite her color, which I was born to dislike. I pooh-poohed her story and showed her Towns’ sworn confession. There is no doubt of her interest in him. She put up a strong plea, stronger than yours, son, but I was adamant. I had to be. I am not at all sure but that she is the guilty party and that Towns is shielding her, I don’t know, my boy—I don’t know where the truth lies. But there’s more here than meets the eye. I scent a powerful, dangerous movement; and despite all you say, if Towns thinks that a plea of guilty and waiver of jury trial is going to get him mercy in my court, he is mistaken. I am sorry—I hate to do it; but he’ll get the limit of the law unless he tells the whole truth.”
And the judge sighed wearily and gathered up his books.
XVII
Matthew sat in a solemn hall. It was “across the river”—north of the Loop and west of the Michigan Avenue bridge, in a region of vacant dilapidated buildings, of windows without panes and walls peeling and crumbling. A mighty, gray stone structure covered half the block. The front was wrinkled and uneven, with a shrunken door under an iron balcony. Three elevators with musty, clanking chains faced the door and rolled solemnly up five floors. The lobby was bordered with dark stone; the floor was white and gray and cold, and across one side was a huge sign—“Robert E. Crowe, State’s Attorney, Office.” Across the other side one read, “Criminal Court.”
Within these doors, beyond a narrow, oak-paneled hall, sat Matthew Towns, in a high-ceilinged room. The long narrow windows, with flapping dirty green shades, admitted a faint light. The walls were painted orange-yellow. The lights were hanging from the ceiling in chandeliers of metal once brass-colored, with each light socket in an ornamental oak-leaf holder. The globes were of a bluish-yellow glass, pear-shaped. The Bench, of polished oak, was at the rear of a circular oaken-railed enclosure. The enclosure had tables and chairs for lawyers, clients, and witnesses. Well to the front of this green-carpeted space was the desk of the clerk. To the rear, on a raised platform, were seats for the jury. Raised yet higher was the platform upon which rested the judge’s bench; on either side of the bench were doors with signs, “Judge’s Chambers,” “Jury Rooms.” Facing this circular enclosure were long seats in rows for the spectators. The floor here was the same dirty gray, much-worn tile, and the ceiling over the whole, while very high, was noticeable only because it was so soiled and stained.
Soft sunshine filtered in and lighted up the rich polish of the oak. Behind the high desk sat the judge—heavily silked, his grave, gray face looking sternly out upon the world. The strained faces of that world, white, black, and brown, were crowded in the benches below, and some stood in hushed silence. Policemen, bareheaded, moved silently about the throng, and two officials with silver and gilt stood just below the judge. There should have been music, Matthew thought, ​some slow beat like the Saul death march or the pulse of the Holy Grail. Then the judge spoke:
“Matthew Towns, stand up.”
And Matthew rose and stood, center of a thousand eyes, and a sigh and a hiss went through the hall. For he was tall and impressive. The crisp hair curled on his high forehead. The soft brown of his eyes glowed dark on the lighter brown of his smooth skin. His gray suit lay smooth above the muscles and long bones of his close-knit body. He looked the judge full in the face. The eyes of the judge grew somber—but for a tint of skin, but for a curl of hair, but for a fuller curve of lip and cheek, this might have been his own son, this man whom his son had known and honored.
“Matthew Towns,” he said in low, slow tones, “you stand accused of an awful crime. With your knowledge and at least tacit consent, some person whom you know and we do not, planned to put a hundred, perhaps five hundred souls to torture, pain, and sudden death. At the last minute, when literally moments counted, you rescued these people from the grave. It may have been a brave—a heroic deed. It may have been a kind of deathbed repentance or even the panic of cowardice. In any case the guilt—the grave and terrible guilt hangs over you for your refusal to reveal the name or names of these blood-guilty plotters of midnight dread—of these enemies of God and man. With the stoicism worthy of a better cause and a cynical hardness, you let these men walk free and take upon yourself all the punishment and shame. It has a certain fine-ness of sacrifice, I admit; but it is wrong, cruel, hateful to civilization and criminal in effect and intent. There is for you no shadow of real excuse. You are a man of education and culture. You have traveled and read. I know that you have suffered injustice and perhaps insult and that your soul is bitter. But you are to blame if you have let this drown the heart of your manhood. You have no real excuse for this criminal and dangerous silence, and I have but one clear duty before me, and that is to punish you severely. I could pronounce the sentence of death upon you for deliberate conspiracy to maim and murder your fellow men; but I will temper justice with mercy so as still to give you chance for repentance. Matthew Towns, I sentence you to ten years at hard labor in the State Prison at Joliet.”
​The sun burst clear through the dim windows and lighted the young face of the prisoner.
Some one in the audience sobbed; another started to applaud. Matthew Towns followed the guard into the anteroom, and thither the Princess came, moving quietly to where he stood with shackled hands. The windows all about were barred, and at the farther end of the room stood the stolid officer with a pistol and keys. Down below hummed the traffic.
She took both his manacled hands in hers, and he steeled himself to look the last time at that face and into the deep glory of her eyes. She was simply dressed in black, with one great white pearl in the parting of her breasts.
“You are a brave man, Matthew Towns, brave and great. You have sacrificed your life for me.”
Matthew smiled whimsically.
“I am a small man, small and selfish and singularly short of sight. I served myself as well as you, and served us both ill, because I was dreaming selfish little dreams. Now I am content; for life, which was twisting itself beyond my sight and reason, has become suddenly straight and simple. Your Royal Highness”—he saw the pain in her eyes, and he changed: “My Princess,” he said, “your path of life is straight before you and clear. You were born to power. Use it. Guide your groping people. You will go back now to the world and begin your great task as the ruler of millions and the councilor of the world’s great leaders.
“Your dream of the emancipation of the darker races will come true in time, and you will find allies and helpers everywhere, and nowhere more than in black America. Join the hands of the dark people of the earth. Discover in the masses of groveling, filthy, ignorant black and brown and yellow slaves of modern Europe, the spark of manhood which, fanned with knowledge and health, will light anew a great world-culture. Yours is the great chance—the solemn duty. I had thought once that I might help and in some way stand by the arm posts of your throne. That dream is gone. I made a mistake, and now I can only help by bowing beneath the yoke of shame; and by that very deed I am hindered—forever—to help you—or any one much, I—am proud—infinitely proud to have had at least your friendship.”
The Princess spoke, and as she talked slowly, pausing now ​and then to search for a word, she seemed to Matthew somehow to change. She was no longer an icon, crimson and splendid, the beautiful perfect thing apart to be worshiped; she became with every struggling word a striving human soul groping for light, needing help and love and the quiet deep sympathy of great, fine souls. And the more she doffed her royalty and donned her sweet and fine womanhood, the further, the more inaccessible, she became to him.
He knew that what she craved and needed for life, he could not give; that they were eternally parted, not by nature or wealth or even by birth, but by the great call of her duty and opportunity, and by the narrow and ever-narrowing limit of his strength and chance. She did not even look at him now with that impersonal glance that seemed to look through him to great spaces beyond and ignore him in the very intensity and remoteness of her gaze. She stood with downcast eyes and nervous hands, and talked, of herself, of her visit to America, of her hopes, of him.
“I am afraid,” she said, “I seem to you inhuman, but I have come up out of great waters into the knowledge of life.” She looked up at him sadly: “Were you too proud to accept from me a little sacrifice that cost me nothing and meant everything to you?”
“It might have cost you a kingdom and the whole future of the darker world. It was just some such catastrophe that the Japanese and Indians rightly feared.”
“And so, innocent of crime, you are going to accept the brand and punishment of a criminal?”
“My innocence is only technical. I was a deliberate co-conspirator with Perigua. I—murdered Jimmie!”
“No—no—how can you say this! You did not dream of peril to your friend, and your pact with Perigua was a counsel of despair!”
“My moral guilt is real. I should have remembered Jimmie. I should have guided Perigua.”
“But,” and she moved nearer, “if the dead man was—Perigua, what harm now to tell the truth?”
“I will not lay my guilt upon the dead. And, too—if I confessed that much, men might probe—further.”
“And so in the end I am the one at fault!”
“No—no.”
​“Yes, I know it. But, oh, Matthew, are you not conscience-mad? You would have died for your friend had you known, just as now you go to jail for me and my wild errand. But even granted, dear friend, some of the guilt of which you so fantastically accuse yourself—can you not balance against this the good you can do your people and mine if free?”
“I have thought of this, and I much doubt my fitness. I know and feel too much. Dear Jimmie saw no problem that he could not laugh off—he was valuable; indispensable in this stage of our development. He should be living now, but I who am a mass of quivering nerves and all too delicate sensibility—I am liable to be a Perigua or a hesitating complaining fool—untrained or half-trained, fitted for nothing but—jail.”
“But—but afterward—after ten little years or perhaps less you will still be young and strong.”
“No, I shall be old and weak. My spirit will be broken and my hope and aspirations gone. I know what jail does to men, especially to black men—my father—”
“You are then deliberately sacrificing your life to me and my cause!”
“I am making the only effective and final atonement that I can to the Great Cause which is ours. I might live and work and do infinitely less.”
“You have ten minutes more,” said the guard.
“Is there nothing—is there not something I can do for you?”
“Yes—one thing: that is, if you are able—if you are permitted and can do it without involving yourself too much with me and my plight.”
“Tell me quickly.”
“I would not put this request if I had any other way, if I had any other friend. But I am alone.” She gripped his hands and was silent, looking always straight into his eyes with eyes that never dropped or wavered. “I have a mother in Virginia whom I have forgotten and neglected. She is a great and good woman, and she must know this. Here is a package. It is addressed to her and contains some personal mementoes—my father’s watch, my high-school certificate—old gifts. I want her to have them. I want her to see—you. I want you to see her—it will explain; she is a noble woman; old, gnarled, ignorant, but very wise. She lives in a log cabin and smokes a ​clay pipe. I want you to go to her if you can, and I want you to tell her my story. Tell her gently, but clearly, and as you think best; tell her I am dead or in a far country—or, if you will, the plain truth. She is seventy years old. She will be dead before I leave those walls, if I ever leave them. If she did not realize where I was or why I was silent, she would die of grief. If she knows the truth or thinks she knows it, she will stand up strong and serene before her God. Tell her I failed with a great vision—great, even if wrong. Make her life’s end happy for her. Leave her her dreams.”
“You have one minute more,” said the guard.
The Princess took the package. The policeman turned, watch in hand. They looked at each other. He let his eyes feast on her for the last time—that never, never again should they forget her grace and beauty and even the gray line of suffering that leapt from nose to chin; suddenly she sank to her knees and kissed both his hands, and was gone.
Next day a great steel gate swung to in Joliet, and Matthew Towns was No. 1,277.