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THESE
LOW
GROUNDS
Waters Edward
Turpin



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THESE LOW GROUNDS





THESE
LOW GROUNDS
By
Waters Edward Turpin

ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΑ
EXO INTER
ΔΩΣΟΥΣΙΝ
ΑΛΛΗΛΟΙΣΝ
Harper do Brothers Publishers
New York 1937 London


THESE LOW GROUNDS
Copyright, 1937, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved. It
may not be used for dramatic, motion-
or talking-picture purposes without writ-
ten authorization from the holder of
these rights. Nor may the book or part
thereof be reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without permission in writ.
ing. For information address: Harper
Brothers, 49 East 33rd Street, New York,
N. Y.
8/7
FIRST EDITION


To my Mother
REBECCA HENRY





THESE LOW GROUNDS





English
wattenare
11-
23-418
64624
Chapter One
o 12-9-168 EBW
ARTHA unbent from the washtub, roused
by a frightened clucking, and made
hastily for the front lawn. "Devilish
chicken-stealers!" was her first thought.
At the corner of the house the rooster,
Toby, scurried past, and at the same moment something
thudded into Martha's middle. She sat down, breathless.
Facing her, also on the ground, was a man, a dusky
mulatto, who blinked foolishly and gave off a strong
odor of liquor.
Martha scowled fiercely. "What you a-doin', a-chasin'
mah Toby?" she demanded. “Is you one dem fug’tives?
Go 'long wid you befo' Ah calls mah missy an' she gits
you put in jaill”
The man continued to blink stupidly. But his wits
were not too dull. Even through the fog of whisky he
could tell that Martha was as good-looking a woman as
he had seen in many a day. His connoisseur's eyes took
[1]


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especial note of two provokingly shapely legs revealed
to indiscreet advantage.
Martha jumped up hastily, embarrassed by his stare.
"Ah done tolt you to git 'long wid you, ain't Ah?"
she said, impatiently.
"Ah warn't trying to steal yo' chicken," muttered the
man. He erected himself in sections without taking his
eyes off Martha. “You sho' is purty, gall"
Martha glared at him, but now the glare was a little
forced. “Ah ain't axin' you fo' no sweet talk!" she de-
clared. "Git 'long wid you."
The man stood brushing himself, quite at ease. Sud-
denly he grinned engagingly.
"When you's tired bein' mad," he said, "gimme
somepn to git clean wid. Mah marse'll gimme glory-be
efn he catches me like dis."
“Ah ain't gonna git you nuffin'-nuffin'l" answered
Martha, struggling to maintain a frown. She'd had time
to take in the fellow's good looks. Tall and slim-broad
shoulders slender waist-aquiline features eyes jet
black and yellow flecked. Not many men came cut to
that pattern. And his clothes didn't look like any clothes
she'd seen on Baltimore Negroes; they reminded her
of those worn by Joseph, the butler back home on the
plantation.
He was still grinning. "Aw, honey, don't take on so,"
he said, soothingly. “Ah jes' come to town yestiddy from
down Tidewater way, Virginny. "
"You-all from Virginny?" Martha's anger gave way to
curiosity. “Dat's where Missy and me's from. Looka
[2]


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yere, man, you ain't tryin' to fool me, is you? What's yo'
name?" It had been a time since she'd seen anyone from
the Tidewater.
He breathed easier. “Mah name's Joe,” he said. “Git
me somepn to brush wid an' Ah'll tell you all 'bout it."
Martha sped indoors and returned with a whisk
broom.
"You see," Joe began, “Ah comes from Stanbrough
Manor "
"Den you-all's plantation is right next ours," Martha
interrupted
"You means you's one o' ole man Owens' people?
Doggone mah skin! Den you must be Mis' Lucrece's
gal dat went away wid 'er when she come north to be
a nurse.”
"Dat's right."
Joe's excitement mounted. “Look yere---you-all know
dat Marse Hugh Allen done come up yere jes' fo' to see
Mis' Lucrece?"
"So you's his nigger?"
"Yassah! Ah'm his vallay."
"Why fo' Marse Hugh want to see mah Missy?".
Martha wanted to know. "Her don't have nuffin' to do
wid de likes o' him. Her's too busy."
Joe looked wise. "He make like he jes' come up on
bizness. But Ah knows he ain't fo'got how he use try to
be her beau!"
"Huh!" Martha put a world of contempt into the
exclamation.
[3]


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“He 'lows he's a-comin' to see her t'night." Joe
handed the brush to Martha and looked at her specu-
latively. “How'd you like me to come, too? Huh?"
Martha shrugged. “Don't make no diffence to me."
Joe moved slowly away, then turned.
"Ah'll be yere--you hear me?"
As he gained the walk, Martha peered around the
corner of the house, her teeth a white streak in the
brown of her face.
It was spring. Joe came that night and other nights
in the weeks that followed.
One evening Martha was hooking Lucrece into a new
gown. "Missy~" she began.
“Yes, Marty?" And as Martha seemed not to hear,
Lucrece repeated: “Yes, Marty?"
"When is Marse Hugh goin' home, Missy?".
“Do you mean when is Hugh going home, or when
is Joe going home?" parried Lucrece. Her calm gray
eyes were bent quizzically on her maid.
Martha looked up shyly at her mistress from beneath
lowered brows. A smile played across her mistress'
serene countenance.
"Wal, Ah did kindah mean dat, too, Missy."
“They're leaving day after tomorrow," Lucrece in-
formed her, and turned to leave the room.
“Missy!” The cry was almost a scream as Martha
dropped to the floor, sobbing.
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Lucrece knelt beside her. "What's the matter, child?
Is it-" The question was irrelevant-Lucrece knew be-
fore Martha shook her head affirmatively. “Why that's
nothing, honey," she comforted. “There's only the
two of us, and there's plenty of room for a baby."
“But, Missy, dat ain't it. Ah wants mah chile to have
a pappy. Ah don't want 'im to be bo'n—'cause de Good
Book done say it ain't right.”
“Precious much the Good Book has to do with
babies! Besides, you can't have Joe, honey. You know
that.”
Martha was silent for a moment, drying her eyes.
When she looked up at last she was calm, and there
was no mistaking the resolution in her voice.
"Missy, how long Ah bin wid you?"
Lucrece frowned, trying to recall. “Why, I don't know
exactly, Martha. About fourteen years, hasn't it been,
since we came to Baltimore? Why?"
Martha ignored the question.
"Has Ah ever done wrong sense Ah bin wid you?"
she continued. “Hain't Ah always looked atter you?
Is Ah ever axed you fo' nuffin'?"
"You've been wonderful, Martha. And I appreciate
everything."
They arose and faced each other, two mature women
who had been together since the plantation days of
their childhood and youth.
"What is it, honey?" asked Lucrece, gently.
Martha replied quietly, in an even voice: "Ah wants
[5]


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Joe, Missy. Ah wants to git married. Efn you'll buy
Joe
"Hugh wouldn't sell him, Marty. Besides, what do
you want with him? He's no good. I can see that plainly."
"Ah wants him, Missy!" Martha was stubborn.
Lucrece's expression of amused impatience changed
to one of resignation.
“All right. If you can make Joe stay, I'll make Hugh
sell him."
III
So Lucrece bought Joe, and Martha got what she
wanted. The birth of her child, Carrie, was almost si-
multaneous with the outbreak of the war. Her work
called Lucrece to the battlefields. Then shortly after-
ward Joe left home blithely with a band of colored
volunteers made up of Freedmen, and Martha was in
tears.
[6]


Chapter Two
T UCRECE came homema Lucrece whose hair was
iron gray and whose high, thoughtful brow was
faintly lined. She had known Shiloh and the
Wilderness.
Sherman had marched to the sea in spite of
stubborn, gallant resistance. Grant had haunted Rich-
mond until harassed Lee could no longer bear the
misery-ridden faces of his soldiers. Western Maryland
rested easily, at last, from the hoofbeats of “Beauty"
Stewart's phantom cavalry. There had been Appomat-
tox, and now there was peace.
The little house in Baltimore, where Martha and
Carrie lived with Lucrece, returned to a semblance of
order. Martha went out to work by the day for wages-
this was Lucrece's idea; Martha saw little reason in it
-and during Martha's absence Lucrece looked after
Carrie. She could not stand the routine of nursing now
- could not bear the faces of the sick. She preferred to
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spend her time teaching Martha's golden sprite of a
daughter her letters.
Joe had not returned. He had not been heard from
during several years. At first Martha had grieved. But
she couldn't do that for long. She had Carrie to think
of, and the future. The future involved a plan—a way
to spend her glittering savings. She was going to buy a
house. Then she and Carrie would have a piece of
property like every provident Negro who looked ahead.
It was a burning ambition.
Martha realized her ambition before she hoped. For
when Carrie was eight years old Lucrece died. And her
will provided that the proceeds from the sale of her own
house should go toward a last payment on Martha's.
So Martha and Carrie moved into the eastern section
of Old Baltimore where Freedmen Negroes—those who
had earned or been granted their freedom before the
war--lived beside newly emancipated Negroes in a curi.
ously mixed settlement.
Carrie's teacher had died—a gentle young Negro
whose pioneer zeal had demanded more than his weak-
ling body could perform and Carrie and Martha were
returning from the funeral. As the hired carriage drew
up to her house Martha saw a man and woman stand-
ing on the porch. She stared aghast, then ran forward
with a glad cry and threw her arms about the man.
[8]


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"Joe!—Joel—Is it you, honey?"
Joe grinned complacently—the same Joe, a little more
dissipated, not so elegantly dressed.
“Sho, honey. Didn't you-all know Ah'd be a-comin'
home some day?”
"Lawsy! Ah done said all 'long you done bin kilt in
de war!” Martha hugged him closer.
“Dey couldn't kill dis yere chile-nossuh!" Indicat-
ing the woman, he said, “Dis yere's mah sister Sue.”
Carrie stood watching, bewildered. She had never
known her father.
“Looka yere, honey_dat ain't our baby, is it?” Joe
pointed to the child.
Martha assured him it was.
"She sho is purty! Come yere to yo' pappy, honey."
Joe stretched out his arms invitingly.
Carrie hesitated. She was not sure that she liked this
man. However, she sidled up to him and allowed him
to kiss her cheek. He smelled just like a man she had
come upon one Sunday morning in the gutter.
"You-all come on inside,” invited Martha. “Dis yere's
mah house,” she added, proudly.
"Yeah?” exclaimed Joe, interestedly. He threw the
woman Sue a sharp glance which was answered by a
casual raising of the eyebrows.
“Yassuhl" assured Martha. “You-all jes' make you'self
to home, an' me'n' Carrie'll fix up somepn fo' you."
She passed into the kitchen, and soon the scent of frying
fish spread through the house.
Joe settled himself beside Sue on the sofa.
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Iswe
“Look yere,” he said, “don't you let on to her you
ain't mah sister, see? Dis yere's a place fo' us to live, and
efn you don't let on, it'll be all right, see?".
Sue looked at him evilly, but did not answer. Joe was
not satisfied.
“Lissen yerel Ah gits run outn Richmond on 'count
o' you messin' wid white men. Didn't Ah have a good
barber shop an’ was makin' good money? Ah always
kept you in classy style. So now you gots to help me!
You hear?" He paused to see what effect this had.
Sue gave an impatient sniff.
"Now what we does is dis: Ah gwine start a barber
shop yere. Efn you is mah sister, Marty ain't gone mind
you stayin', an' you kin git some work to do, see? She
don't have to know de diff'rence."
Sue heard him through absently, her gray-green eyes
fixed on a corner of the room, as if the plan of imme-
diate action lay there.
"Whyn't you tell me you was married?” she de-
manded, her voice husky with anger.
"How come you gits yo'self messed up in Richmond,
huh?" Joe countered.
Sue stared again into the corner, and came to a de-
cision.
“Lissen. Ah gwine stay yere"-she paused as Joe
brightened—“but ain't gwine be nuffin' 'twixt us! Ah
gwine git a job_efn Ah kin. An' efn Ah cain't—wal,
Ah cain't.” She shrugged indifferently.
Martha's cheery voice broke into the conversation at
this point, calling them to the kitchen. At the table,
[10]


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the question of his belated return. But Martha still felt
tenderness toward her first and only lover. She went to
him. now and hugged him hungrily.
“Dat's all right, honey. We's gwine start whar we
left off, ain't we?".
Joe cast a glance over her shoulder at Sue, but she
had left the table with a roll of her eyes and was saun-
tering into the parlor, her hips switching in studied
nonchalance. Joe read “finis” in the movement and re-
signedly enveloped Martha in his arms. After all, he
decided, he might have done worse.
III
Joe wanted to start his barber shop. It wasn't ambi-
tion that urged him to work, nor was it a desire to help
Martha in meeting living expenses. He missed the gos-
sip and the back-room gambling and the chance a bar-
ber-shop window afforded to review the passing feminine
show.
But Joe had no money. So he went first to Sue.
It was two weeks after their coming to Baltimore,
and in this time Sue had bestirred herself—not too vio-
lently. But so perverse is fortune, her half-hearted quest
had rewarded her with an easy job in a small, pros-
perous family. For two days, like the proverbial new
broom that sweeps so clean, she did admirably. (She
was a good cook, if a bit sloppy.) But on the evening of
the second day, a big black sailor, in port for the first
time in months, accosted her while she was on her way
[13]


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home from work. She glanced over his huge well-knit
frame. A whiff of the liquor tingled into her nostrils.
His toothsome grin enticed her. ... The next morn-
ing she awoke alone in a dive on the docks. Languidly,
more out of curiosity than desire to do the right thing,
she dressed and approached her place of work, to have
the kitchen door opened by an angular Swedish woman.
"Oh! Guess Ah'm in de wrong place," Sue giggled
tipsily.
"You ban rightl" asserted her successor with an ener-
getic slam of the door.
Thus Sue was relieved of the burden of toil. But
because she suspected rightly that Martha would not
understand, she left the house each morning as if she
were going to work. There was a “blind pig” some
blocks away where she could spend the day idling with
the proprietor's wife and drinking what she could get
gratis. Then, night coming on, she would ply her an-
cient trade. She did well.
Now, listening to Joe's request for money, she os-
cillated her gray eyes violently. Joe's hopes oozed.
“Lissen, man,” she told him, “Ah'm doin' enough
keepin' mah mouth shet, ain't Ah? What's de mattah
wid yo'woman?” With that she flounced off.
Lacking other alternatives, Joe went to Martha. She
was dubious and said so. But she couldn't resist Joe.
She loved him. She went, therefore, to Max Abrams, an
immigrant Jew, who lived at his place of business in
the heart of the Negro section.
Max was something of a phenomenon in the neigh-
[14]


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borhood. He was a short, slightly built man, with def-
initely Semitic features and eyes that took shrewd ac-
count of everything they saw. An accident had left him
partially crippled in both legs, but had done nothing
to daunt his intrepid spirit. Among the Negroes he was
liked and admired. He was the only white man they
knew who permitted them the use of his first name-
and this in itself was a cause of wonderment.
"Vell, Marda, wie geht's?" he greeted from the back
of his store as he caught sight of Martha and Carrie
making their way through open barrels of flour and
sugar. He liked Martha. She wasn't lazy and she always
paid her bills promptly. “Ach! Und how ist das schöne
Mädchen tonight, hein?” he beamed upon Carrie, ten-
dering her a piece of licorice twist.
Martha nervously scanned the rolls of cloth against
the fly-specked walls. Now that she was here, she didn't
like the idea of the loan at all. Maybe Max wouldn't
let her have it. This thought, which should have com-
forted her, agitated her. Joe needed the money. Joe
must have that shop! Joe would make good. Joe-
Joe. ...
She wasn't versed in the arts of business, so she came
right out with her request. Max listened intently, con-
sidered this woman, her husband, whom he had esti-
mated fairly at first sight.
"But, Marda,” he cautioned, "wenn your husband-
he don't make der gut,” His expressive hands com-
pleted the warning.
Martha's head came up and her gaze did not flinch.
[15]


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At that moment she was like a carven figure in heroic
proportions. She said what women in similar situations
have said through countless ages:
“Mah man'll do all right!"
Max smiled and nodded ruefully. “Lieb ist über
alles.” His voice was resigned. He became all business.
Terms were agreed upon (more lenient terms than
Max's better sense dictated), the mortgage was drawn
up, and the money was handed over to Martha. Then
Max leaned upon his scarred counter, his shoulders
drawn up to their highest, and with a hint of pity
watched Martha and Carrie depart.
IV
In justice to Joe, when he stood for the first time in
his starched white coat and freshly creased trousers, he
had every intention of making good. And for a while
there was substantial promise of success. Customers
poured in, the best people of the settlement-butlers,
hostlers, coachmen, and other domestics. Even Max Ab-
rams came to get his hair-cut and shave and add prestige
to the establishment; also the Reverend E. J. Jones,
shepherd of Shiloh Baptist Church. Soon all the Negroes
of any means had their private shaving-mugs deposited
on the shelves of Joe's shop. Martha glowed proudly,
while the children of the neighbors were glad to be
associated with Carrie.
By the end of the first year half of the debt to Max
was paid, including the small interest rate required.
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Max was surprised, but made no comment. Maybe he
had been wrong.
Joe was industriously applying an after-shave lotion
to the fat, shiny-black face of the Jamesons' well-fed
butler when a surprised voice twanged from the door:
“Looka yere! Efn it ain't ole Joel"
Joe glanced up quickly. Exclaiming his delight, he
abandoned the fat man's chin and leaped to meet the
newcomer.
“Jake Tillery! You yaller son of a - " Joe disre
garded the No Profanity sign on the wall, which had
been placed there at the request of the Reverend E. J.
Jones.
The man facing Joe was of Joe's height, slim, and of
that mulatto coloring which is described by Negroes
as "dirty yaller." His eyes were light hazel, his head
small and egg-shaped. Adorning it was a mat of sandy
kinked hair through which ran a razor-made part-a sin-
gle canal in an arid waste. The shop loafers, commenting
on the elegance and extreme cut of his clothes, opined
that he was "dressed out de barrel.” Although the man
was ugly, it was not this that made him repugnant.
There was something else-some indefinable quality of
evil that lurked in his slinking movements and empha-
sized an unwholesome look of dissipation.
He and Joe entered into an animated conversation
that ignored the Jameson butler until that worthy,
[17]


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growing disgruntled, wrenched himself out of the chair
like a sulky bear, finished wiping his jowls, replaced
his stiff collar and black tie, and stalked out.
“So you gots a wife, eh?” Jake was saying. “Looks like
you done struck it rich, man!”
"Ah'm a-doin' fair-to-middlin',” Joe admitted, com-
placently. Just then a cough caught him. He went to
a little cabinet and poured two glasses of liquor. “Yere,
take one wid me.”
“Luck to you,” toasted Jake, briefly.
“Hopes you lives fo’ever, an' hopes Ah never dies!”
responded Joe.
As they drained their glasses, a tall, thin-faced, dark-
brown man came in, dressed in the sober garments of
the divine calling. He eyed Jake suspiciously and glared
reprovingly at Joe.
"Brethren,” his high-pitched voice intoned, "'wine is
a mocker, an' strong drink is raging'! Brother Owens,
whyn't you walk in de path more'n you does? Hain't Ah
done tolt you ..." The Reverend E. J. Jones was just
warming to his temperance talk as he divested his frock
coat and standing collar.
A true child of Satan, and not relishing this baptism
of verbal holy water, Jake signaled to Joe that he would
return later, and sauntered out. He wasn't interested in
morals or souls.
Not far from the shop he encountered something
more to his taste. It was Sue. She cruised up the dimly
lighted street just as Jake turned the corner. He looked
likely. She assumed her most enticing manner. Need-
[18]


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less to say, Jake was open to any promising suggestions.
He returned her scrutiny. Then he looked again. There
was something familiar. Where had he seen those weav-
ing movements before?
Sue's simpering, wide-eyed look changed to one of
astonishment.
“Fo’ de Lawd's sake! Jake!"
“Yeah,” said Jake, laconically.
“Look yere, honey, what you a’doin' yere?” Sue's eyes
sparkled as she pressed a hand caressingly against his
chest.
“Klu-Kluxers," answered Jake, shortly. He was think-
ing. Sue must be doing well, if her clothes were an in-
dication. Better sound her first, though. ...
"What you doin'? Workin'?” he asked.
Sue grinned. “Nope. Seem like Ah jes' cain't git no
job.” She winked knowingly. “But Ah’m doin' purty
good.”
“Look yere, baby, Ah jes' got in town an' Ah'm
broke. Ah had to use all mah money gittin' 'way from
Richmond.” His voice became syrupy as he drew the
unresisting Sue to him.
“Whar was you goin', honey?" His eyes were half-
closed, like a cat's when it has scented a mouse.
Sue's hands played over his back and arms. She
laughed invitingly.
"Ah reckon Ah was a-waitin' to go wid you, honey,'
she cooed.
“But Ah ain't got no money "
[19]


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Sue interrupted him to pull up her dress and point
significantly to a bulge under her stocking.
“Keep yo' money, big boy. Ah knows you gots some
efn dey's any in de world. Ah don't want yo' money...."
Jake grinned as they swung up the street.
VI
It didn't require much effort on Jake's part to per-
suade Joe to open a gambling-den in the back room
of the shop. He would have opened one long ago had
it not been for Martha.
Jake put it this way: Business was good and Joe
needed a helper on Saturdays. He, Jake, had some
money with him (chiefly his share of Sue's earnings from
clients he sent to her), and would buy another bar-
ber chair. In return he would receive a percentage of
the increased custom.
Martha listened to the plan with misgivings. She
didn't like Jake, and she didn't like the way he eyed
Carrie whenever he came to the house. Moreover, Joe,
since Jake's coming, had taken to drinking more heav-
ily. Still, Joe vowed that Jake was a good barber and
his best friend, and he was out of work. Finally Mar-
tha was prevailed upon. And Jake set about putting
his ideas into practice.
He installed the second barber chair. Then he turned
his attention to the back room, adding to its furnish-
ings a long oblong table covered with green felt, a
pair of smaller tables with chairs, and two powerful
[20]


These Low Grounds
nickel lamps. To insure privacy—more to be desired
than fresh air—he sealed the two windows, but left the
door available as a means of hasty exit.
The first Saturday night passed smoothly. Jake whis-
pered invitations to a picked group, counseling quiet,
and deserted his duties in the front of the shop to act
as game-keeper, or cut man, and maintain orderly play.
At one o'clock everyone left quietly by the back door.
When they had gone the partners entered into finan-
cial calculations. Within a few hours they had made
more money at the game than they had made all day
in the shop.
“Man-dee!” exclaimed the elated Joe.
Jake, hardened gambler that he was, remained calm.
“You ain't seed nuffin' yit,” he prophesied. “Wait'll you
start makin' real money, man. Dis yere's chicken feed."
Even Martha was pleased when she was informed
next morning of the brisk upturn business had taken.
But though she greeted Jake more amiably, she still
held him at a distance.
VII
Business continued good—so good that there was a
tendency to forget the caution to quiet. Strange conver-
sations drifted from the back room to the customers
out front.
One Saturday the Reverend E. J. Jones came in for
his pre-pulpit shave and hair-cut, his Bible under one
arm, somber preoccupation veneering his thin, ascetic
[21]


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face. He sat down in the chair next to Joe's and relaxed
with hands clasped across his narrow chest—a prophet
in repose.
"Whar's yo' pardner?" he inquired.
Joe wavered nervously from one foot to the other
as he clipped his customer's hair. He couldn't afford
to let the Elder know of the gambling, and he couldn't
keep him waiting equally hot fires burned, as it were,
at his front and rear. Finally he went to the door lead-
ing into the den and opened it a crack.
There was a low hum of voices mingled with the
faint click of dice. Then: “Come, li'l' bitches, come!
Hah—you sev'!”
Sometime in his vanished youth the Elder must have
watched the dice, for his relaxed frame galvanized im-
mediately into action. He leaped from his chair with
astonishing swiftness and pointed a long, bony finger
at the discomfited Joe.
"You gots gamblin' back dar!” he declared in a pierc-
ing voice. “Why fo' you gots it, Brothah Joe?" And he
went on to deliver his best tirade, ending with bristling
promises of hell fire and brimstone. Then he stalked
out of the shop.
Joe rushed into the back room and drew Jake aside.
“We gots to stop dis game fo’ tonight!” he panted.
“De Eldah done found out 'bout it.”
Jake shook his head. “Efn Ah stops dat Big Sam when
he got his luck on he sho start somep'n.”
Joe argued feebly, but Jake was firm. He saw money
[22]


These Low Grounds
for himself in sight and he was against pampering the
pastor in his aversion to gambling.
“Wal, fo' de Lawd's sake, keep 'em quiet!" Joe gave
way. "Efn Marty find out 'bout dis, she'll jes' nacherly
raise hell, shol"
VIII
PS
Martha was finding out at that very minute, for the
Reverend Jones had not felt his duty ended with the
impromptu sermon to Joe. He came upon Martha over
the washtubs and delivered himself promptly in as scath-
ing terms as he could command.
When he paused for breath Martha was wiping her
arms on her apron.
"You come wid me!” she said, and there was a men-
ace in her voice.
But the Reverend E. J. Jones was not made of the
same metal as Isaiah, the dauntless prophet. He visioned
the treatment he might receive at the hands of the
angered gamblers, and that particular brand of martyr-
dom held no charm for him.
"No, Sistah Martha, Ah ain't gwine wid you. Ah'll
preach me a sermon dat'll break dat thing up!"
So Martha was alone when she appeared at the shop
door a few minutes later.
"Hullo, honey,” Joe greeted her uneasily. "You
ought'n' to come out wid no coat on—you'll git yo'
death o' cold."
[23]


These Low Grounds
The solicitude was lost on Martha. "Whar's dat gam-
blin' a-goin' on yere?" she demanded, abruptly.
She took her stand in the center of the shop, feet
braced widely apart, hands gripping her broad hips.
This was a Martha Joe had never seen. He was fright-
ened.
"Whar is it, Ah says?" Martha's deep voice was dan-
gerous.
Joe did not have to answer. A voice from the back
room boomed, “Walk, you bitches, walk!”
Sweat broke out on Joe, and it was not caused by heat
from the pot-bellied stove. He tried to intercept Mar-
tha's lunge for the door, but with one sweep of her hand
she sent him sprawling. A violent twist and jerk of the
knob flung the door open, and Martha stood poised on
the threshold, like an angry brown goddess about to
scatter destruction on her sinful subjects. The effect
was instantaneous.
Hand raised high over his battered, dirty hat, Big
Sam stared at this apparition which had appeared so
suddenly. His big eyes popped to their uttermost, and
his thick-lipped, open mouth froze on an unspoken
command to the dice. The cane with which Jake shuf-
fled the cubes broke its hopping, anticipatory antics,
and lay like a miraculously petrified snake on the green
cloth. Men forgot their haggling over side bets. The
drunken, slobbery-mouthed youth with the consump-
tive face and hang-dog expression stopped annoying
Jake for a free turn at the dice at the expense of the
game-keeper. More than a score of eyes, displaying vari-
[24]


These Low Grounds
"Yeah,” agreed the kneeling Jake without looking
up.
“Reckon we bettah count up an' split de kitty, den,”
suggested Joe. He coughed nervously.
Jake arose slowly. He arranged the gathered coins into
small neat stacks on one of the card-tables along with
the square box containing the “cuts.” His eyes fondled
them. He passed a caressing hand over them, much in
the manner of a father patting the heads of his chil-
dren. Then he squinted at Joe and asked in low, cold
tones:
“What kitty you talkin' 'bout?"
Joe licked his dry lips. He had a foreboding that all
was not well. Words would not come.
"You see dat?" Jake pointed to the wrecked table.
“Wal, dat's yo' kitty! Yo' woman done bust it an' you
gots to pay fo' it! See?"
"But dat ain't cost much as dat money, Jakel" pro-
tested Joe.
"Go haid 'n' take yo’s, den," Jake invited, grimly
sarcastic. His eyes held the same hateful gleam that had
burned at Martha. His right hand, like a hydra-headed
serpent, glided stealthily toward his hip pocket.
Joe shivered. He had witnessed that glinting, upward
flash of steel once before at Richmond, and remembered
the bloody aftermath. In his haste to be gone he stum-
bled over the door sill.
Jake shrugged contemptuously, swept the stacks of
money into the box, and departed.
[26]


These Low Grounds
IX
True to his word, the Reverend E. J. Jones preached
a sermon exposing Joe's moral failings, and his obedient
flock cried their "amens” in vigorous approval. When
he was finished Joe had lost a great portion of his
clientele. And as the days passed other customers—
those upon whom Martha's fury had descended-drifted
over to the barber who was Joe's only competitor. Mar-
tha had not foreseen this effect of her action.
Idleness settled upon Joe and he turned more fre-
quently to his bottle. He hadn't even Martha's sym-
pathy for comfort; contempt was at last eating away
her blind love for this weakling. She refused to sleep
with him—his slobbering embraces revolted her.
One cold night he fell into a drunken stupor and lay
in a gutter until Martha found him and carried him
home. Already honeycombed with tuberculosis, he lin-
gered two feverish weeks, then a hemorrhage spurted
out his life.
[27]


Chapter Three
ARTHA spoke to Carrie across the dinner
table. It was the Sunday following Joe's
burial.
"You cain't git off to school dis year,
I chile,” she said.
Carrie's bright eyes dulled. She had set her heart
upon going to the Institute.
Martha went on: "We's got to pay our debt. Efn we
works hard dis year, next year you kin go. Warn't fo'
dat good-fo’-nuffin' Joe you could a-gwine dis year!
Missy told me dat man warn't no good!” She took Car-
rie's chin in her roughened hand and lifted it gently.
“Lissen, chile,” she said, bitterly, “don't nevah let no
no-'count man make no fool outn you! Ain't no man
no-'count! Y'ear me?”
[28]


These Low Grounds
They made an heroic effort, but after a year bent
over their tubs the mortgage was still unpaid. And
Carrie's hope of attending the Institute was little nearer
realization. The ceaseless drubbing toil was hardest on
Carrie, and for hours and days at a stretch the girl
would be plunged into the black moods that are the
affliction of adolescence. Was all her life to be cut to
this dreary pattern? Was she to go on forever rubbing,
rinsing, bluing, ironing, delivering clothes? She saw no
other fate in store. And it wasn't fair! It wasn't fair!
Lucrece had put the thought of schooling into her mind
and the young Negro teacher had fostered it. She was
a good student-bright and quick. She was wasting her-
self over endless batches of clothes.
So she fretted. Spring gave way to summer, summer
to autumn, autumn to winter. And each day was hope-
lessly like the one just past.
Then one morning, before the Christmas season, she
was in the back yard hanging out a basket of clothes
when she heard a cry.
“Carriel Carrie”
In the kitchen she found Martha collapsed beside the
ironing-board, on which a sheet was smoking.
"Mah-arm-honey,” Martha panted. “It-ain't
Carrie took one look at her mother's twisted lips and
[29]


These Low Grounds
sped toward the front of the house, where footsteps
sounded. Fright leaped in her heart.
In the dining-room she collided with Sue.
"Lawdy!” Sue exclaimed when she saw Martha's
drawn face. “It acts like mah uncle Mark's when he
was strick. Help me git 'er to de couch,” she directed
Carrie, "an' den you run git de doctah.”
III
Sue was in deep conversation with Jake in a basement
room not far from Martha's house. It was Jake's new
place of business.
“Look yere," he was saying, "didn't you tell me dat
Joe tolt Martha you was his sistah?”
"Yeah, but —
"Nev' mind de but—you jes' stay his sistahl See?”
"Yeah—but don't dat make me have to take care dat
gal, Carrie, efn Martha dies? Ah ain't used to — ”
"Nev' mind what you's used to! Don't you see, you
fool?_efn de gal comes to you, so's de house!" Jake
paused to see what effect this would have.
Sue slapped her fleshy thigh. "Dog-gonel Dat's right,
ain't it?" She thought a minute. “Look yere, Martha
mo'gaged dat house to set Joe up in dat shop. S'posin'
dey ain't paid it off?”.
"Wal, Ah was figgerin' dat you an' me could kindah
hang together," Jake confessed. “Ah gots a li'l' pile what
Ah done made yere—an' dey's mo' comin'. What say,
hon'?"
[30]


These Low Grounds
Smiling her agreement, Sue snuggled against him and
explored his lean body with plump fingers. Jake re-
sponded abstractedly but with expertness. Then with a
kiss, and a pat on a rounded buttock he sent Sue on
her way and turned to the task of tidying the den. In
one corner he spied a slimy pool where some one had
unloaded an excess of liquor.
“Damn pigs!” he exclaimed, disgustedly, as he reached
for a pail of sawdust.
Martha's death profoundly affected a number of
people. It left Carrie to the questionable protection of
Sue, with no one to turn to for love and understanding.
It gave Sue and Jake a home to which their wits did
not entitle them. Incidentally, it afforded the Reverend
E. J. Jones with a theme for one of his most eloquent
sermons. Martha had not attended church after the
night of the gambling-den episode, and this digression
from the Path of Light-according to the Reverend
Jones's interpretation—in all probability contributed
directly to her demise.
Martha was buried beside Joe. The Sisters of the
Shining Star in the West Lodge stood about the fresh
mound and chanted “Till We Meet.” Then all took
their ways home, to be submerged again in the affairs
of their separate lives. It mattered to no one that Mar-
tha symbolized a link between their present freedom
[31]


Chapter Four
N a certain morning during the rainy sea-
son between winter and spring—when the
fog banks steal up the Chesapeake and fall
over Baltimore with a clinging, dripping
embrace-Jake awoke out of alcoholic
slumber and growled disagreeably. He looked at the
clock. Seven. Hell! He'd slept only five hours! He was
about to settle back into his pillow when his attention
was caught and held by Sue's face, and he bent upon
her the gaze a man directs toward a woman of whom
he has had too much; an unfavoring, searching scrutiny.
What he saw did not tempt him.
Whisky had swollen the pale-yellow countenance.
Sleep had flung wide her loose-lipped mouth, display-
ing stained teeth that had never known a brush. Her
hair was a sodden mass. With a jerk of the covers Jake
revealed her body, but the sight of that ungainly mound
of flesh only increased his distaste. His lips curled. He
lay back and stared at the ceiling.
[33]


These Low Grounds
In two years Jake had prospered. His gambling-den
had more than made its way—it had cleared the mort-
gage on Martha's house. The house itself, straying from
its original purpose, had proved a lucrative asset, for
single rooms were let regularly for the use of transient
bawds.
Jake was pleased with his achievement. But lying in
bed this morning he reflected that success entitled him
to a woman more pleasing than the one beside him.
One thought led to another until in a moment of de-
cision he stepped cautiously out of bed and made his
way to the door.
Down the damp, smelly hall he stole, past the corner
bedroom where Big Lil lay with her consort of the
night, past another room whose door was open, reveal-
ing a state of towering disorder—Callie had sneaked out
early without paying his percentage of her fee. At a
third door he stopped and listened, then exerted a
steady pressure.
Carrie wakened to see Jake's evil yellow face so close
that twin streams of heat from his distended nostrils
pounded against her neck. She did not scream, but her
black eyes clouded with hate. Jake misinterpreted her
calm.
"Honey,” he whispered.
Grasping her shoulders, he attempted to kiss her. Im-
mediately ten fingernails raked his face, leaving livid
streaks in their wake, while strong flashing teeth
clamped the point of his chin in a painful vise. With
one spring a slender brown fury leaped from the bed.
[34]


These Low Grounds
“Ef you don't git out o’here, Ah'll call A'nt Sue!"
she warned.
Jake was disconcerted but not convinced; he moved
towards the girl, then stood swaying on the balls of
his feet while reason battled with liquor and passion.
Finally his long training over the gaming-table decided
in favor of reason. He did not relish facing an aroused
Sue, and he knew that Sue countenanced no liberties
with Carrie—some obscure motive prompted her to
take the rôle of protector very seriously.
Jake backed quietly to the door and left.
Carrie sat on the bed and drew the quilt about her
shoulders. She knew what Jake had wanted. The women
and men who came to the house had been a liberal
education, and Sue on one occasion had informed her
bluntly on the functions of sex, concluding with: "So
you keep clear o' dese menfolksdey don't mean you
no good.” The advice had been unnecessary. Carrie
was not attracted to the men she saw about her. It was
easy, with Sue's coöperation, to meet their suggestive
smirks with indifference. For Carrie was as Martha had
been. A tidal wave might some day engulf her, but
there would be no promiscuous giving.
But the moment had come to take stock of her situa-
tion. She wanted to get out of all this the filth, the
smell of whisky ... everything. She had not forgotten
her first bright hopes of school. She wanted to know
things—things Lucrece and the young teacher had
known. She wanted to do things—not just cook and
keep this hateful house in a semblance of order.
[35]


These Low Grounds
The mirror reflected a pleasing young person of six-
teen, slender but not angular, light brown in color.
If she gathered her hair into a discreet bun and wore
a dress that would conceal the absence of curves, per-
haps she would look older. She would try. For Carrie
had made up her mind.
"You goin' to git yo’self a job!” she told her reflec-
tion. “Efn you wants to go to school, you gots to git
out of here and git some money!”
The kitchen clock on the shelf said a quarter to eight
as she stepped into her slippers and eased noiselessly
out of the door. From the alley she turned up the rain-
slicked pavement at a rapid pace, unmindful of the
puddles beneath her feet. Somewhere ahead was a job.
Mrs. Josiah Hobarth was having a most disagreeable
morning. The fog would have been enough—it always
depressed her and brought on an attack of asthma. But
in addition to the fog there was Gretna. Gretna, her
hired girl, had calmly left the evening before, after in-
forming her: "Ole und me, ve ist married to be diese
nacht.”
Mrs. Hobarth had pleaded for a few days of grace
until she could get some one else, but the girl had been
firm. “Nein, mum, Ole, he ist no vant for me to hire
out now. Ole, he say dat for him I vork now.”
And that had ended the matter. Ole, the hack-driver,
arrived for Gretna's belongings and they departed. And
[ 36 ]


These Low Grounds
because of them Mrs. Hobarth was in the kitchen this
morning, cranking viciously at the clinker-clogged grate
of the stove. It gave at last, but when she attempted to
start a fire the damp wood did nothing but smoke. She
was dirty and perspiring from her exertions. Upstairs,
Mr. Hobarth wanted to know where she had put this
shirt and that tie.
The good woman could have screamed.
It did not appease her to hear a timid knock at the
door, accompanied by an equally timid brown face at
the window pane.
Rising impatiently, Mrs. Hobarth swung the door
back so violently that the knob slipped from her hand
and dislodged a piece of plaster from the wall. This
damage to her newly painted kitchen was the crowning
exasperation of the morning.
“What do you want?" she almost yelled at the girl on
the doorstep.
Carrie shrank within her cloak and forgot her curtsy.
She had had no idea it would be as hard as this! “Do
you need a girl?" she blurted, in desperation, wide-
eyed.
A sigh escaped Mrs. Hobarth. A smile ironed out
the wrinkles which irritation had caused. She stepped
aside and motioned Carrie into the kitchen.
"Can you cook?" she asked.
“Yes’m,” answered Carrie.
Her sharp eyes caught the smoke wreathing from
between the lids of the stove. She stepped over to it,
turned the damper straight with the chimney, and
[37]


These Low Grounds
opened the bottom door. Ashes seeped from the pile
beneath the grate. She shoveled the pile into a pail,
then swept up the floor.
When she turned back to Mrs. Hobarth approval was
written in every line of that lady's plump florid face.
A little smudge on the tip of her nose looked like an
isolated polka dot in a pinkish dress. Carrie tried to
suppress a smile, but failed.
“What are you laughing at?" the woman asked, good-
humoredly.
Carrie decided to tell the truth.
“Yo' nose is black, ma'am,” she answered, as soberly
as she could
Mrs. Hobarth bustled hastily to the mirror, and after
one look at herself burst into laughter that shook her
like so much gelatin. The laughter cleared the air of
the last vestige of gloom.
“I'm Mrs. Hobarth. I don't know what sent you-
but the Lord knows I'm glad you're here! Now, if
you'll cook breakfast for Mr. Hobarth and me, we'll
have a talk later about you. You'll find things in the
cupboard and the pantry. Just eggs. And Mr. Hobarth
likes biscuits. Can you make them?"
"Yes'm!” grinned Carrie, happily, darting for the
pantry.
III
That night between sips of whisky Sue listened to
Carrie tell of her job.
[38]


These Low Grounds
"Huh!” Sue grunted. "Seems like you'd a stayed yere.
You didn't have nuffin' to do but pass a li'l'likker
’round. 'Co’se, you suit yo’self. Ah promised yo' mammy
Ah'd look to you. Ah done de bes’ Ah could. Efn you
gits tired, you come on home. See?"
"You bin real nice, A’nt Sue—but Ah wants to make
enough money to go to school.”
Sue made a face. “What you want go to school fo'?
Ain't nuffin' but a waste o' time.”
“Ah'm goin' to school!" Carrie replied, doggedly.
“All right-all right! Go 'haid!” said Sue, placatingly.
She dashed off the last few drops of her liquor. “We
gwine move from yere,” she went on. “Jake says dat
meddly Mandy Dobson talk too much. We gwine down
by de docks—Jake says bizness bettah. So efn you gwine
stay whar you works, you better take yo'clothes wid
you tonight.”
Cheerfully Carrie packed her few belongings and
went back to the Hobarth home. She thought the tie
broken that bound her to Jake and Sue.
[39]


These Low Grounds
much more important than any man she had ever seen.
Besides, there had been instilled in her the conscious-
ness of racial difference, and this was not easily shaken.
The crisis came one Sunday morning, a fortnight
after Keith's return. He had begged off church, saying
he wanted to walk over to the Falls. In a short while
he stepped through the door of the kitchen.
“Busy?” he inquired, blithely.
Carrie looked up, startled, from the potatoes she was
peeling. Dismay followed swiftly on surprise. She started
to rise, then remembered the pan in her lap and sat
down again.
"Ah thought you'd gone to church, Mr. Keith."
“You know why I didn't go?” he asked, leaning
against the table. A furnace raged inside him.
“P-please don't stay, Mr. Keith!” Carrie's eyes lifted
pleadingly to his.
The soft beauty of the up-tilted brown face stripped
the boy of all his youthful restraints. With a single swift
movement of his hand he swept the pan from her lap
and jerked Carrie to her feet into his arms. He was
bending his head to her lips when
"Keith!”
It was like the cracking of an oaken beam. The voice,
reverberating across the room, put to flight Keith's pas-
sion and left him cold and limp. Carrie sank weakly
into a chair.
“Go into the parlor, Keith!" Mr. Hobarth's large,
fleshy face was aflame. He turned to Carrie. “I don't
know whose fault it is,” he said. “I don't care. I thought
[41]


These Low Grounds
the spirit of Martha and left her a prey to all the weak
elements that were her heritage from Joe. The flame
of her ambition, that had struggled so desperately to
maintain itself, made one last effort, then died.
In such a mood Carrie turned into a smelly alley-
street that paralleled the waterfront. It was lined on
either side by warehouses and stables that frowned down
upon the few squalid dwellings, much as children scowl
at their enfeebled elders who have lingered too long.
From the first of these decrepit houses came the sound
of a wheezy reed organ, a guitar and a whisky-cracked
soprano—all blended in a doleful tune. The voice was
unmistakably Sue's.
Carrie knocked at the weather-washed door, from
which the paint was peeling. Instantly the discord
within stopped. But no one answered the knock. Carrie
called:
“Open up, A’nt Sue!"
There was a pause. The door slid open a trifle, and
Sue peered out cautiously. Through the haze of her
liquor she recognized Carrie. She swung the door wide,
grinning her welcome. In her own way, she had learned
to love this child of Martha's.
“Come on in, honey!” she cried. “What you doin'
yere? Got de day off?”
“Gimme a drink,” said Carrie, shortly, dropping her
bundle.
“Drink? Sho. Water in de back room, honey."
“Ah wants likker! Likker!”
[43]


These Low Grounds
Sue blinked her amazement. Carrie had never touched
whisky, even though it had always been accessible to
her.
"What's de mattah_” Carrie's scowl halted Sue's
query.
"All right, honey . . . all right. ..." she soothed,
and staggered through dirty drapes to the back room.
Carrie deposited her bundle on a chair, sat down and
looked about her.
The room was about ten by eight feet. The floor was
bare, except for two spotty, ragged mats which sprawled
like grimy poodles asleep in the sun. The walls, in the
more seemly days of their past, had been papered, but
now were shedding in patches. As if to offset this evi-
dence of deterioration, flies had obligingly dotted the
surface with an effect that suggested a pattern. Several
people, in varying degrees of intoxication, lounged in
the chairs along the walls, regarding Carrie curiously.
A pock-marked, scrawny yellow woman sat in the
corner, with one arm flung about the bullish neck of
her companion. At the organ was a light-skinned youth,
lean and fidgety, with a brown-paper cigarette swinging
limply from his mouth. Four women, unpaired, after
one look at the newcomer, went back to their lusty snor-
ing. They were resting for the evening, when men
would be coming from the harbored boats in search of
diversion.
Sue brought in a small demijohn of rum and set it
on a side-table along with some glasses.
[44]


These Low Grounds
“Help yo'self, honey—but you bettah go slow, seein's
it's yo' first."
Carrie ignored this counsel, poured a brimming glass-
ful and drained it at a gulp; poured another and drank
that. Sue's eyes rounded in astonishment.
“Lawsy, chile! You gwine to git drunk sho's you
bo’n!” she warned. “It makes me drunk to watch you!"
"Ah don't care!” Carrie avowed, tempestuously. She
approached the organist.
“Play that song ag'in," she ordered.
The youth turned readily to the organ and struck
from it a few groaning, preliminary chords, then swung
into the tune Carrie had heard from the street. The
bull-necked black man disengaged himself from the
skinny arms of the yellow woman and strummed an
accompaniment.
"Sing it, A'nt Suel" laughed Carrie, crazily.
Sue caught up the refrain, which told of a certain
brown-skin "papa,” for whom a dolorous brown-skin
gal was longing. The verses were mere jumbles, liber-
ally supplied with obscenity. But the whole wove a
rhythmical pattern which beat into Carrie's liquored
brain until she began to hum along with Sue. As she
caught the words she sang louder in a deep contralto,
and as she sang she swayed her trim hips in time to the
music. The guitarist's eyes were dark slits. His yellow
companion sulked angrily.
Heavy boots fell upon the steps outside, the door was
jerked open, and Jake waved four men into the room.
He evinced no surprise at Carrie's presence.
[45]


These Low Grounds
"Mistah Hen’y Taylor”—he introduced the first man,
a black giant with huge, square jaws and incredibly thin
lips. The awakened women eyed him appreciatively.
"Mistah Zack Wheelah.” That stubby one hunched
his shoulders a trifle and grinned.
“Mistah Hank Tate an' Mistah Slim Hackins." Tate
and Hackins were too drunk to display any interest and
remained placidly blank.
Jake finished the introductions by turning to the
women:
"An' dis is Jinny.” Jinny was chocolate-colored and
robust.
“Andis is Kate—” A midgety, faded-yellow jade
smiled invitingly; she wasn't choicy.
“Dis yere's Josie.” Cynical lips twisted across a color-
less face, like a streak of blood on a piece of bleached
putty, and hard eyes fixed themselves on the weak-faced
Hackins. He involuntarily staggered over to her.
“An' Cassie," Jake ended. That squat, black one
grinned the width of her broad face. Hank scampered
to her, like a mouse to a piece of cheese.
“Who dat?" asked the big man, indicating Carrie.
Before Jake could answer, Sue confronted the fellow.
“Dat's mah niece—why?" Her tone challenged. The
huge man looked at her and looked away.
"Nuffin',” he said, and strode over to the robust
Jinny. Wheeler, of necessity, took his place with the
uncoupled Kate.
"Go on an' sing, Carrie,” bade Sue.
[46]


These Low Grounds
There were times, during the days that followed,
when the old urge for an education would revive in
Carrie; but never to remain for long. Too much of her
father's spinelessness had been engendered by her first
failure. The injustice of the Hobarth incident so shad-
owed her thinking that it served as an immediate check
whenever she considered getting another job. She fon-
dled the notion that all the world conspired against her.
The notion became an idea and in time a fixed state
of mind.
A contempt for everything and everybody fastened
upon her and soured her. She despised Sue for her slov-
enliness. To Carrie the woman was filth personified.
She loathed the seafaring men, their leering faces and
lust-flamed eyes. They made her feel naked. Some of
them would come alone and insist that she sit at their
table. Sue assured her that she didn't have to if she
didn't want to. But Carrie derived malicious pleasure
from watching them try to make her drunk. She de-
vised a scheme by which she increased Sue's liquor
profits and at the same time rid herself of annoyers.
Next to the wall under each table she placed a wide-
mouthed crock. The first two or three drinks she drank
outright—she developed a surprising ability to control
her liquor—then when the man became too stupefied
to notice, she deposited drink after drink secretly into
the crock. The ruse delighted Sue.
[47]


These Low Grounds
But though she loathed these others, it was Jake for
whom she had a consuming hatred. She hated the cold
precision with which he robbed his less brainy oppo-
nents over the crap-table. She hated the swift snakiness
of his lean fingers as they curved about the dice. She
hated the way he cut quarters, instead of nickels, from
the winnings of a half-drunk illiterate. And, above all,
she hated and shrank from the assuredness of his stare,
which seemed to prophesy that some day she would be
his in spite of her antipathy. She answered that stare,
however, with a defiant scorn which was heartened by
the knowledge that Sue's protecting bulk stood between
them.
Thus Carrie kept her physical chastity, like a luster-
less gem in a setting of corroded metal. She attached
no value to it. She simply didn't choose to part with it.
Then, in about a year and a half, out of the lowlands
of Maryland's Eastern Shore came Jim Prince.
[48]


Chapter Six
NUMMER had carried over greedily into Sep-
tember; time of hot, sultry days and nights
cooled by breezes off the Bay; time when
farmers from the harvested fields of Virginia
and Maryland come to Baltimore town seek-
ing buyers.
As soon as you saw him, you knew that Jim Prince
was not of an urban breed. His spanking-new clothes,
the extreme cut of them, their flashy pattern, the self-
conscious manner in which he wore them-all attested
his bucolic origin. Further evidence was the exagger-
ated swagger of his narrow yet powerful shoulders,
which sloped as if they were eternally lifting a heavy
load. His young cop per-brown face bore the imprint of
toil, and the face harmonized with veined, hard hands
that were obviously unaccustomed to handling dice.
The very curve of the knotty fingers suggested rather a
plowshare or hoe. And despite thorough scrubbing, de-
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n frowned.
spite the odor of cheap tonic on his freshly cut hair, he
smelled of earth-clean plowed earth. .
After a short time spent in Jake's gaming-room, Jim
Prince left. Clearly, it was no place for one who appre-
ciated a dollar, and Prince did. He drifted into the
front room.
Two women looked up hopefully as he entered, but
he dismissed them with a glance and strode over to
Carrie, who was absently fingering chords at the organ.
She looked at him without interest and returned to her
aimless music. Nothing daunted, Prince leaned against
the organ and let his eyes rove leisurely over her head
and shoulders. She frowned.
"Well?" she demanded, peevishly.
He grinned, and his grin had an infectious quality.
“Mah name's Prince- Jim Prince,” he informed her
in a twangy, lilting drawl. "Everybody titles me Prince,
though. Ah’m from de Sho'—East'n Sho,' Maryland,
down to Shrewsbury and Deerfield way.” He paused,
waiting for Carrie to exhibit some interest, but the
organ wheezed on in unconcern.
"Mah ole man he sent me to Balt'more, 'cause he's
poorly, to look attah de wheat- an' corn-sellin'. Ah'm
jes' 'bout finish now an' thought Ah'd have me some
spreadin' joy. But dat cat-eyed hound in dar, he done
tried to take me fo' a good thing. So Ah thought Ah'd
git out 'fo' Ah lose mah haid." He bent confidentially
over Carrie. “Now cain't 'mongst-you help a fellah out
what wants a good time?"
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Carrie smiled crookedly as she gave him a hard-eyed
stare.
"You better go on home, big boy, whilst you still
can. These buzzards'll pick you just clean's a bone efn
you hang 'round!” Why she advised him so, she didn't
know. Perhaps it was because of his youth; perhaps be-
cause of his clean virility-two qualities which the other
men lacked.
He began to protest: “Oh, you don't have to worry
'bout me, honey! Ah kin take care mahself, all right.
All Ah wants is-is "
"All you wants," Carrie finished for him, with cool
bitterness, "is what all the rest of the men wants what
comes here! You wants a woman to drink wid an' to
sleep wid.”
Prince was seized with embarrassment.
“Ah'll drink wid you. But”—Carrie looked him
straight in the eye—“that's all.”
She left the room and returned with a bottle, beckon-
ing him to a near-by table. Prince took the drink she
offered, but sputtered and choked trying to down it.
"You ever drink likker befo'?” asked Carrie.
"No-only Thanksgivin' an' Christmas an' New
Year's,” he confessed.
"Huh!” grunted Carrie. "What Ah ought to do is
make you drunk an' take all yo' money from you! But
Ah reckon Ah'm jes' too chicken-hearted. . . . You git
outn here 'fo' some wench takes all you gots!"
"You reckon so?” queried Prince, already dizzy from
his single drink.
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“Yeah, Ah reckon so!” declared Carrie, emphatically.
"One mo' drink an' you ain't able to stand on yo' feet!
Come on!”
“But Ah'm all right!"
"You better git on a boat an' leave fo' the Sho' efn
one's goin' tonight!” With that she shoved him out
into the alley.
He came again the next day. Sue was taking her daily
nap, and Jake was out. It was too early for the other
women.
“Thought you was on yo' way back to the farm?"
Carrie looked up from the dress she sewed. She was
neither glad nor annoyed at seeing him. “Rest yo’ bur-
den, since you's here," she invited. She motioned him
to a chair.
Prince sat down and stretched his long legs. He
grinned his slow, boyish grin, but said nothing.
"What's the matter?" asked Carrie. “Boats stop
ru
runnin'?"
"Nope, dey still runnin',” Prince assured her. He
cut a piece from a plug of tobacco, and thrust it into
his mouth, careless of the sharp edge of the knife. "Jes'
didn't feel like leavin' today," he concluded.
"Oh, you wants to git robbed anyways!"
"Ain't nobody gwine rob me," vouchsafed Prince,
searching for some place to deposit a mouthful of juice.
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wc.
Gingerly, with a foot, Carrie shoved a filthy cuspidor
from beneath a table.
"What you come here fo', then?" she asked.
“ 'Cause Ah wanted to see 'mongst-you ag'in,” was
his blunt answer.
“Lissen, big boy, didn't Ah tell you nothin' doin',
last night? The rest o' these women do that—not me!
Ah ain't no piece o' meat to buy!”
“Is Ah said anything 'bout dat?” he countered, un-
ruffled. “An' who says Ah buys?"
"Huh! That's what they all come here fo’.”
"What you stay yere fo' efn you don't like it?" re-
torted Prince.
"Where Ah goin' to go?" demanded Carrie. She put
the dress aside and took up the conversation in earnest.
“Lissen, big boy, Ah reckons this place is the only one
fo' me. Ah was bo'n fo’ bad luck, that's all!" .
"Luck's in de Lawd, an' de devil's in de people,"
drawled Prince, and he spat squarely into the cuspidor.
"Huh! That's what you think, but Ah knows better!
Lissen.” And Carrie sketched the details of her life: her
mother's death, its consequences, her failure to keep a
job, her longing for an education. Prince listened sym-
pathetically.
"Ah ain't got no eddication," he said, “ 'cept'n a year
or so. Ah kin read an' write an' count. An' mah ole
man, he ain't got no l'arnin' a-tall. But he sho is smart.
He warn't freed by no white mens a-fightin' fo' him.
Nossuh!” Prince went on to tell how his father had
worked seven years for his freedom and five more for
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that of his wife; how his father had struggled to make
his small plot of ground yield, adding more and more
land, until now he owned "a purty tol’able farm.”
“But de ole man's failin' fast,” Jim concluded. “Co'se,
he allows he kin still keep up—but 'tain't so. He home
now 'thout nobody to look attah him. Ain't bin no
woman in de house since Ma died.”
Despite herself, Carrie had become absorbed in the
narrative. It lifted Jim Prince out of the category of
all the men she knew and made an individual of him
-some one clean and wholesome. She felt belittled be-
side him.
"It must be nice down there,” she ventured, wistfully,
and for the first time she smiled whole-heartedly at him.
“ 'Mongst-you would like it!” he exclaimed, eagerly.
"Some o' dese days," he prophesied, “Ah'm gwine have
one o' de best farms on de Sho'.” And Carrie could not
help but feel that his was no idle boast.
“Looka yere—uh” he stammered. “Looka yere,
how'd you like to be down dat way? 'Mongst-you don't
b’long in no place like dis.” Prince indicated the dingy
room which even Carrie's industry could not much
remedy.
"Do you reckon Ah wants to stay here?” came the
disconsolate reply. “But where am Ah goin'? Ah cain't
git no job after what happened at the Hobarths'.”
“Ah don't mean fo' you to stay in Balt'more," inter-
posed Jim. "Ah means fo' you to go home wid me. We
needs a woman 'round de house-me an' Pa- "
“You means you would-marry me?” Carrie cried.
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"Co’se Ah means dat!” answered Jim, firmly. He
leaned forward eagerly.
Away from the filth and the smell of raw liquor and
stale smoke. Away from the debauched men and crawl-
ing women. Away from Jake's hateful face and hot eyes,
from Sue's sloppiness. Away—to where she could see
clear skies and clean earth, instead of drab gray walls of
warehouses and crumbling bricks. ... The picture
caught and held her for a moment. Then her habitual
pessimism blotted it out rudely.
"No.... No. . . . It wouldn't work. It mought fo'
a while . .. but wouldn't last long. Ain't nothin' never
goin' to last wid mel Guess Ah b’longs here."
Prince pleaded. He coaxed and argued. But Carrie
remained listlessly determined. Finally he arose.
"Guess Ah'll leave tonight on de twelve-'clock boat.
Good-by.”
Carrie made no answer.
III
The weather had changed overnight. A blustery
northeast wind rushed from the Bay, sweeping debris
before it. It was not a cold wind, but it bore a chill
which made the alley-dwellers close their doors. The
ragged urchins who usually played about the doorsteps
had carried their activities inside.
Sue was enjoying one of her alcoholic naps. Jake
puttered about the gaming-table, making minute re-
pairs. Carrie was at the organ. As she played she
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hummed softly, thinking of many things of Jim Prince
and his farm and her own dreary lot.
Suddenly Jake's voice purred above her and his fin-
gers caressed her shoulders.
“You sho' sings purty, gal.”
Carrie's fingers died on the keys.
“Take yo’ dirty hands offn mel" she commanded, her
voice metallic.
Jake said nothing, but pressed himself against her
back and gripped her firmly.
"You hear me?" Her voice rose to a higher pitch.
“Ah'll call A’nt Suel".
“Go 'haid," snickered Jake. He held her more tightly.
"A'nt Suel A'nt Suel" called Carrie.
There was no answer. Jake laughed.
“Go 'haid! Holler!” he mocked.
Carrie struggled to gain her feet and Jake shifted
his hold to her wrists, twisting them violently. The girl
kicked and tried to bite, but without success. She felt
herself weakening.
"Let me gol" she cried.
As if that were a signal, a long form hurtled through
the door and leapt on Jake, while sinewy fingers, like
cables, wrapped themselves about the gambler's freckled
neck. Like a bag from which the contents are pouring,
Jake sank to his knees, his pale eyes bulging.
From across the room, where she had been flung by
the impact of the men's bodies, Carrie recognized the
distorted face of her rescuer, who at the moment seemed
intent on killing Jake.
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"Jim! Jim Prince!” she screamed.
The great fingers loosened slowly, and Jake dropped
to the floor.
Prince picked up the limp form. “Show me whar he
sleeps-an' git me some likker,” he ordered Carrie.
Carrie led the way upstairs. When he had dumped
his burden on the bed, Prince took the bottle and
poured some of its raw contents into Jake's gaping
mouth. Jake gurgled and spat feebly.
"Git yo' clothes together,” Jim told Carrie.
"Mah clothes?”
“Git yo' clothes!" His voice snapped. “Whar's yo'
A’nt?"
Carrie jerked a thumb at the other bedroom. “She's
in there—drunk.”
"Kin she read?”
"A li'l'."
“Wal, you jes' make a note sayin' you's gone," com-
manded Prince. “Hurry up!” he added, before she could
begin to quibble; "it's 'most time fo' de boat!"
[57]


Chapter Seven
TT IS a low, flat land, the Eastern Shore of Mary-
land. It crouches there between the Chesapeake
on the west and the state of Delaware on the east.
Toward the south the green waters of the Atlantic
wash lazily-lazily, that is, until one of those north-
eastern gales frightens the ocean out of its calm. At such
times, gigantic billows blast the frail man-made bul-
warks and wipe away, as by the sweep of an angry god's
broom, those little clusters of frame houses and hotels
which are the sea-shore resorts. And the tidal waters of
the Choptank, the Miles, the Shannon, the Tred-Avon,
and others of the rivers, flood the inland towns, driv-
ing the population into the upper rooms of their dwell-
ings. Then the refuse from the outhouses floats in the
streets until the waters subside. And the crops of the
farmers are ruined, and their live-stock lost.
It crouches there, the Shore, like a sulking, neglected
child, with its scattered hamlets, towns, and villages.
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Some of them have caught the modern spirit; others lie
in dull contentment with their lot beneath whatever
kind of sky the fates provide. The farmers plow, plant,
and reap. The river men snatch their produce from the
streams. The canners pack their tomatoes and peas. And
natives of all persuasions are born, live, propagate, de-
cline, and are buried beneath the low, flat land, in order
that their children may take up the thread of life.
Carrie loved these autumnal lowlands to which Prince
had brought her. She loved the steady sameness of their
flowing fields fringed by pine woods. Somehow the mo-
notony of the landscape reassured her—gave her a feel-
ing of security.
She liked, too, the way the sun regulated her life.
She arose at dawn, there were so many things to do.
There was the fire to be made; breakfast to be cooked;
the chickens to be unroosted; the cows to be milked
with Jim's coaching. At noon, Jim and his father would
come in from the field, preceded by their eager mules,
smelling of the manure they had been spreading. And
it was a treat to watch them gobble up the meal she
had prepared. After dinner the two men sat on the back
porch and chewed their quids—the old man whittling
aimlessly, Jim scanning his land in contemplation-
while Carrie washed the dishes and went about her
housework. Then back to the fields they would go, to
return with the sunset and the chickens and the lei.
surely plodding cattle.
When supper was finished the three of them gathered
about the big kitchen stove which roared with pine
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logs. Carrie might read aloud from old newspapers, the
Bible, or from the one book she had brought with her.
Jim rarely said much, but schemed silently. The old
man was different. He could be lured easily into con-
versation, for he loved to talk of the past: scenes and
events on the plantation. Weddings, christenings, fugi-
tive slaves, floggings, deathshe recalled them all as if
they had been catalogued within his mind. Carrie never
tired of listening to him. And she understood why
Prince was so proud of him. He had known toil. He
had faced years of grinding disappointment. He had
met life bravely, with a purpose in mind, and he had
won his reward.
Later, when deep night settled, Prince would help
his father to bed. Then after locking the doors and
banking the fire, Prince and Carrie would follow. And
in bed, with the feel of Prince's arms about her, Carrie
found contentment.
But Sunday was red-letter day, when, after morning
prayers and a simple breakfast of warmed-up food-the
elder Prince would allow no cooking on the Sabbath-
they would attend church. The journey was made in a
fringe-topped carriage, in a silence that was rarely
broken, for Sunday was the day of meditation. Carrie,
in her best dress of sober gray, sat beside her husband,
in store-bought clothes and celluloid collar. The back
seat was given entirely to Father Prince, who always
wore the swallow-tail coat that denoted his deaconship.
Yes, Sunday was red-letter day because the church,
which nestled on the western extremity of Shrewsbury,
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focused all the social life of the little community. One
was made or broken by his standing with other church
members, and by the number of church activities in
which he engaged.
Carrie warmed immediately to the kindly welcome
that met her from all sides on her first Sunday. Another
week and she had joined the choir. Then the minister,
discovering that she was a capable reader, appointed her
church clerk. A class was given her in the Sunday school,
and she assisted the organist. As a final crowning recog-
nition, the Reverend Holland's wife saw to it that she
entered the charmed circle of the Ladies' Aid. This last
marked a seven-league stride along the social pathway.
If some of the sisters begrudged a newcomer such signal
favor, Carrie was too happy to notice.
Within the first year of Carrie's marriage, old man
Prince left them to join his wife, and for a time there
was a great void in the small family. Then young Jim
came to make welcome and exacting demands on his
mother's time. Because of the child Carrie lost her old
haunting fear that her happiness could not endure. And
more and more she became a part of Prince's life. His
ways were her ways; his mode of thought and ambitions
hers.
[61]


Chapter Eight
TT WAS near the time of Carrie's second child, one
evening at the close of the reaping season, when
there came a terrific pounding at the door.
“Mistah Jim! Mistah Jim!”
Jim hurriedly opened the door to admit a fren-
zied woman.
"Please, Mistah Jim, save 'im-save mah boy! He's
all Ah gots!" She careened crazily about the room,
whimpering so that little Jim crept frightened to his
mother's side.
"Wait!” Prince gripped the woman by the shoulders.
“Now—tell me what's de matter, A'nt Hester!"
“Dey's attah him—Ben!”
“Who's attah him?” Prince demanded.
“De white mens! He an' Mistah Will Redden had a
fuss an' Ben struck 'im on de haid wid a wheel-spoke
attah Mistah Will shot 'im in de chest! Ah gots all de
do's an' windows lock in our house whar Ben is. Oh,
Mistah Jim-Ah b’lieves he dyin'!”
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Prince turned abruptly to the back stairs, and in a
minute returned with an old flintlock rifle. There was
a look in his eyes that Carrie remembered having seen
once before—the day he was bent on choking the life
from Jake.
She flung herself upon him. “Jim!" But he shook her
off and was gone. Shortly there was heard the sound of
swift hoofbeats. Then silence.
The old men of Shrewsbury will still tell you how
Jim Prince reined his lathered mare to a stop in front
of the pool-room that night and rushed into the place
like a raging boar; how he mounted the single table at
a leap to harangue and plead and storm at the men who
stood with up-turned faces-faces that were every shade
from deepest black to near-white. Some of the men were
angry, some sullen, some indifferent—all were fright-
ened. None showed the least disposition to act for two
centuries of the lash had taken their toll of manhood.
“Don't 'mongst-you see dat efn we lets 'em lynch
Ben, dey'll do de same to any of us?" Prince shouted
at the height of his impassioned speech.
He waited for an answer, but none came. Only fright
took possession of all the faces now. Even Big George,
a known fighter, at whose side the endangered man had
worked, said nothing.
Then Jim Prince cursed them, with the frenzy of a
despairing man. The veins in his face and neck filled,
and down his cheeks ran angry tears.
"Ah'll go by mahself!" he finished, leaping from the
table.
pelil.
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They acted then. They closed about him and a crash-
ing blow felled him into blackness.
On the porch of the Prince homestead, A'nt Hester
and Carrie turned haggard faces toward the finger of
flame which had suddenly leapt into the sky. From the
same direction there came faintly on the wind sharp
cries of a human being in agony. The cries were mingled
with a babble of hysterical shouting.
"Dey got' im! Dey got 'im!" The words were torn
from A'nt Hester as she dropped, mercifully uncon-
scious, to the floor.
Had they got Jim also? Carrie lifted tortured eyes to
the sky and prayed while pains of premature labor
gripped her. From the lane came slow hoofbeats. And
the flame slid downward, losing itself in the jagged top
of the pine wood.
That grim night in late October changed Prince's
outlook on life.
How he managed to get Carrie and her child—born
two months before its time-upstairs, he never knew.
Nor how he revived A’nt Hester to a condition of use-
fulness and rode for the doctor. But when he had done
what had to be done he sank into a fever, to emerge
three days later an older, harder man. A path of white
directly through the center of his crinkly hair bore wit-
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ness to the horror which had impressed itself upon his
spirit.
“How's Carrie?” he demanded, and before Dr. Stevens
had a chance to answer: “Ah gots to git outn yere-gots
to git dat fodder in 'fo' it rain.”
“Now, now, Jim," answered the doctor, quietly.
"Carrie and the new little lady are coming 'round all
right now. And you don't have to worry about the work,
either. Big George is taking care of that.”
“Big George!" snarled Prince, remembering.
“I know, I know," nodded the doctor. "All a damn
shamel Damn shame!"
“Dey wouldn't none of 'em help me stop it?"
“I know-I know," the older man repeated. Then:
“Listen, Prince, it won't do any good for you to get
yourself all stirred up again. Those men you tried to
move the other night they don't speak your language.
They're just like the common run of humans—fear is
their strongest feeling. You might as well know now,
Prince, that there is one law your people must learn the
meaning of—the law that says that only the strong shall
live!” The man of science looked squarely at the man
of the soil. “Don't mistake me, Prince. I don't mean
that every man should get himself a club or a gun and
go around doing away with whoever he thinks to be his
enemy. No, not that. But you've got a farm here-one
of the best in the county. That's your strength, Prince,
if you have the gumption it make it so. Understand?
... Now you stay in this bed until I tell you to get
up!”
[65]


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His words fastened in Prince's mind, in a soil already
prepared for them, and took root and grew. Obsessed
by a single idea, the man's character changed. He grew
inhuman, suspicious, and nothing could distract him
from ceaseless work. There was something almost sym-
bolic in his passion to show his independence and self-
sufficiency.
[66]


Chapter Nine
HEN Prince had been married four-
teen years his material assets might
have been listed as follows, in the
order of their importance to him:
One large well-stocked and produc-
ing farm, an accumulation of the land of farmers less
astute than himself.
Farm hands who were so in his debt that payment of
their wages was optional.
One general merchandise store to which nearly all
of the colored population of the town was in debt.
One livery stable, patronized by both colored people
and whites.
One son, who would soon take his apprenticeship on
the farm.
One wife, who did most of the laundry for the well-
to-do white people of the town; she was also midwife,
dressmaker, and social leader.
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The best-looking house in the section to which the
Negroes had moved from the outskirts of Shrewsbury.
Two daughters who would soon be able to work out
as hired girls.
This last item was not just to Prince's liking. He had
never quite forgiven Carrie for bringing these female
children into the world. He had wanted boys to share
the burden of managing the Prince estates. Further-
more, Prince had always suspected that Evenezer's last
minister had had something to do with the fact that
little Martha bore no resemblance to either Blanche or
young Jim. She was too yellow and she was too frisky.
And her hair was straight and luxuriant—the young
minister's hair had been of just that quality. About
that time, too, Carrie had practiced a lot on the church
organ. . . . So Jim Prince put two and two together
and arrived at an ugly four.
Now Blanche and Jim were different. Blanche was
serious and steady, and in time would make an excel-
lent domestic servant. As for young Jim, people were
prone to say that his father had “spit 'im out." He
looked like his father. He talked like his father. He
even walked like his father, and was as shrewd and
smart. If Prince loved anyone, he loved this son of his.
The boy stood before Prince in the store one after-
noon-slim, nut-brown, with small bright eyes and
sharp features.
"Pa, I'm going to finish school here in the spring.
..." He paused, not knowing how to put it. “I been
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thinkin'-I mean I'd like to go to the Institute next
fall.”
Prince knew where that idea had come from. There
had been a brilliant young teacher in town from the
Institute with a quartet of male singers, and during
the week that he held meetings at Ebenezer Church
he had fired the community with his talk of vocational
education. But Prince had other plans for young Jim,
who would soon be fifteen and old enough for farm
work.
Seeing that his father was about to speak in disagree-
ment, young Jim hurried his slow speech. His eyes were
shining. “After that I could help you here with the
business an' the farm. I'd study hard an' learn every-
thing."
Big Jim pointed beyond the window to the turned-up
earth. “You see dere?” he questioned. “Wal, you gots to
dig down in dat 'fo' you kin l'arn 'bout it. Ain't no
books gonna l'arn you.” Then he waved his arm to take
in the store and a desk which was a miracle of neatness.
"Ah didn't l'arn from no books how to do dat, nuthah.
You cain't l'arn right from books. Dey's all right, mebbe,
but efn you wants to l'arn somep’n you gots to do it—an'
keep on a-doin' it!"
"But, Pa, the man said that's what they do at the
Institute,” countered Jim. The light in his eyes was
fading.
"Ah heard 'im speak. But Ah don't see no use o'
wastin' fo' years down dere, when you kin l'arn right
here. 'Sides, look at de money it cost.”
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“But, Pa, you can afford it.”
“How you know what Ah kin affo'd?" demanded
Prince, testily. “Don't you be gittin' uppish jes' 'cause
you ain't starvin'. An' don't you lissen to dese no-'count
niggahs what figgers Ah got heaps. Ah says you ain't
goin'l Ah knows what's best fo' you. ... An' you bet-
ter start checkin' dem 'counts."
Young Jim went to his mother to enlist her aid. But
Carrie, who would gladly have had her own dream real-
ized through her son, could not move Prince. His word
was law and there was no repeal. It had been many
years since he had admitted Carrie to equal partnership
in his life. Yet she continued to worship him, remem-
bering her deliverance from Sue and Jake.
So when the spring plowing began the boy went
under the tutelage of Big George, who could turn the
deepest and straightest furrow in that section. Plow-
shares were toothpicks in his giant hands. Day after
day Jim kept pace doggedly, until his muscles hard-
ened. But he grew thinner, and through the long sum-
mer months of planting and cultivating he had no
appetite. Dr. Stevens, happening by, counseled a change
of climate, but Prince wouldn't hear of it. The boy
was brooding because he couldn't have what he wanted,
that was all. Work would cure any silly fancy in time.
And the father, warped by the passion of a single idea,
honestly believed what he said.
When the harvest season came young Jim was work-
ing in a field beside the main turnpike, and for a week
he waved good-bys to his classmates who were departing
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for the Institute. He did not complain. For when the
spirit is dead, disappointments do not hurt so much.
I
Jim Prince had not reckoned all the possibilities of
his money-making program. He had not known that
galloping consumption has a fertile field in adolescence.
Now he sat, still and tortured, watching young Jim's
life go out, and there was nothing he could do about
it, though he was the richest colored man in town.
Old Dr. Stevens pulled the cover over the disease-
ravaged young face.
"If you'd taken my advice about sending him away,
Prince, we might have saved him.” He tried to make
his voice matter-of-fact. If he could only teach these
colored people to work on an illness in timel
Ike Johnson returned from his second year at the In-
stitute to read the resolutions. "In the spring of life, he
left us at springtime," he ended. Then they buried
young Jim between his grandparents.
[71]


Chapter Ten
TIM PRINCE was hard before. Now, after young
Jim's death, he became mean. Those who had been
jealous of his prosperity grew to hate him. They
hated him for his pretense of superiority. They
hated him for the way he drove his womenfolk to
work for him. They hated him for his grudging aid
during the hard times of an economic depression. In
truth, it was only his formidable array of power that
saved him from violence at the hands of his neighbors.
It was hard times which gave Prince an unaccustomed
leisure, and the leisure induced his thoughts to wander,
with the result that he took a mistress. As far as Carrie
was concerned he had no excuse, for Carrie was as
comely as when he first saw her. Perhaps it was simply
the next inevitable step in an aggressive career. Work,
marriage, success, leisure—then a mistress. Many a man
might confess to the same sequence of events.
His choice was the young Widow Jones, also a mem-
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ber of the choir, who had been much in Prince's debt
since the death of her husband. In the beginning she
had employed her wiles—a fetching smile, an inviting
roll of her dark eyes, and a coo—to solicit leniency
when money payments were due. These overtures from
a woman not his wife were too much for Prince's male
vanity. One thing led to another.
Then the gossips got busy-across the back fences,
in the barber shop, in the pool-room, in the very church
pews: “Did you hear ...” “Ah heard ...” “Dey tells
me ..." "Everybody knows. . ..” For months it went
on, and as is usual, Carrie had no inkling of it. She
was too busy. Then like an explosion knowledge of the
situation crashed into her consciousness,
The Ladies' Aid Society was meeting at the parson-
age to see what could be done about that bane of church
finances,"current expenses." Carrie came late, and paus-
ing on the porch for breath-it was mid-July-heard
her name, then a gust of laughter. The next words
rooted her to the porch floor..
“Everybody knows 'bout it 'cep'n' Sis' Carrie. An'
Prince, he a deacon, too_an' her a-singin' in de choir
right wid de man's wife! Lawsy!” This was Sister Jen-
kins, who knew everything as soon as it happened, or
was miserable.
Rachel King spoke up, a mouselike woman whose
liaisons even Carrie knew about: "Did 'mongst-you see
dat dress she had on last Sunday? Dey ain't givin' dem
'way like dat wid times like dey is nossuh! An' po'
Sis' Carrie she ain't had nuffin' new for years!”
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“Dat man o'hern sho keep her nose to de grind-
stone,” said Sister Jenkins.
"Yass," agreed Rachel, "he jes' tryin' to see how
much money he kin get. Stingiest man in town! Worked
dat boy o'hisn to death, an' tryin' to do de same to his
wife. 'Spect he gwine put dat biggest gal to work soon's
she gits through wid school. He's a mean man!"
Carrie was stunned. As they went further into the
details of Prince's shortcomings, she backed slowly from
the door and down the steps. It was a dark night, lighted
only by stars. She walked, with no sense of the direction,
guided only by the white picket fences which, alternat-
ing with honeysuckle-covered wire, bounded the front
yards. The honeysuckle gave off its delicate lovely
scent but Carrie did not notice. One fact throbbed in
her brain: Jim, her husband, was "runnin'" with a
woman. All else they had said counted for nothing.
Only Prince's unfaithfulness held any significance.
Suddenly the light from the store gleamed into the
hot gloom of the night. Automatically Carrie turned in
through the door. The few loafers, leaning against the
posts of the entrance, winked meaningfully at each
other.
"Where's Mistah Jim?” asked Carrie of the sober-
faced youth behind the counter. At her voice, his sleepy
eyes widened, searching her face.
"Is you got a cold, Mis' Carrie?” he inquired.
"Where's mah husband?" repeated Carrie, impa-
tiently. The clerk started back, stammering: “ 'Dee-
deed—Ah-Ah don't know, Mis' Carrie!”
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Carrie glared at him a moment. Then her shoulders
slumped and she turned away. Out in the night again
she took up her aimless walk. It led her home.
Standing before the white, green-shuttered house, she
heard a party of straw-riders go singing by. Their gay
young voices mocked her. That first summer, she re-
membered, she had had her only straw-ride. They had
been young then, she and Prince. Young? Why, she
was young now-only thirty-four.
But your husband's with another woman, came the
answering thought, like a persistent imp.
She fought it off. Maybe they were just talking, back
there in the parsonage. Of course they were just talk-
ing! Didn't they gab like that about everybody? They
were jealous, that's what it was. They were jealous be-
cause she had gotten the man that nearly all of them
had set their caps for!
But you haven't got him, reminded the imp.
I havel—I havel
In her bedroom Carrie undressed slowly before the
mirror, and as she did so she surveyed herself critically,
as she had done that morning when she went in search
of a job in Baltimore. There was the same golden-
brown skin. Although she was a little stouter, that only
lent more pleasing curves to her figure. Her hair, loos-
ened from its knot, fell in a rich shawl about her shoul-
ders. There was nothing to be ashamed of, she decided.
A confident smile was on her face as she dimmed the
light and lay on the bed, partially covered by the thin
sheet. She waited. The reedy calls of crickets darted
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through the open window. Recurrent waves of sweet-
ness ascended from the honeysuckle vines. The hours
tolled. Finally sleep conquered her.
Once she awoke, conscious of the heat from Prince's
body. She turned, but his back was to her, and he
snored.
Another woman-got your man! Another woman-
got your man! Another woman-got your man! The
hateful refrain thudded through her brain and fell upon
her pride with bruising force, second after second, hour
after hour.
II
Prince had immediate evidence of Carrie's knowledge
of his indiscretion. First, when he awoke next morning
-it was the Sabbath—he thought it strange to find
rumpled sheets but no Carrie. Then the aroma of bak-
ing rolls came from below. That explained it. Instead
of biscuits, they were having fresh rolls this morning,
and Carrie had risen early to prepare them.
"Sho gots de best wife dis side de Chesapeake," flashed
across his mind, for Prince was partial to freshly baked
rolls. But with the thought his conscience was unpleas-
antly stirred. He recalled what the walls of the Widow
Jones' house had seen as recently as last night. Then
he dismissed all consideration of the matter to turn
over for another nap.
He awoke a second time to find Blanche insistently
shaking him by the shoulder.
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“Mamma says breakfast is ready,” she informed him.
"Here's yo' hot water fo' yo'shave," and she placed
the pitcher on the washstand. Prince's elder daughter
never addressed him as "papa" when she could avoid it.
Downstairs, Carrie and the girls waited for him to
lead the family prayers—a regular Sunday-morning cus-
tom. Carrie did not pray after him this morning, and
he sent a surprised glance at her, for always before this
she had followed his supplication with one of her own.
The girls gave their short, incoherent utterances, after
which Prince led the Lord's Prayer. Again Carrie was
silent.
At the table she ate little, but watched Prince's every
movement with a brooding attention. Her black eyes,
at intervals, concentrated squarely on his face. He felt
them bore into him when he bent down to his food.
When Blanche went upstairs with Martha to dress for
church, instead of getting immediately into his deacon's
garments, Prince delayed in the kitchen.
“What's de matter, honey?” he inquired. "Ain't you
feelin' good?”
Carrie stared at him until his eyes dropped, then
turned to the task of clearing the table. She had not
uttered a sound. He squinted back at her for an angry
moment, and in a flash the realization came that she
knew. He made as if to approach her, but, reconsider-
ing, hastened to his room. As he dressed himself ab-
sently, he pondered the turn affairs had taken.
"Some hussy's done found out 'bout me an' Amy,"
he decided. A second suspicion tramped the heels of the
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first. “Reckon dat woman's done said somep'n to Carrie,
herself? Dirty strumpit! She better not!” Just the same,
he'd be wise to speak to Amy after church. He won-
dered who else knew. Helll if one knew, they all knew!
“Triflin' hounds! All dey gots to do is set 'round an'
meddle in somebody else's business! Jealous! Every
damn one of 'em.”
His accusation at the moment carried conviction,
for the mirror gave him back a handsome figure-slim,
incased in the black swallow-tailed suit that was the
emblem of his churchly rank. Deacon James Prince,
Shrewsbury's leading colored citizen, looked the part.
Meanwhile, Carrie, putting on her grey muslin dress
and outmoded straw hat, had reached a conclusion of
her own. She resolved to speak to the Reverend John-
son at the close of the morning services. Perhaps he
could persuade Prince to give up the widow. This hope,
rising out of despair, drove some of the gloom from her
face, and by the time they had walked to church she
was able to summon a front with which to march up
the aisle to her place in the choir.
They were a little tardy, as became the most distin-
guished family of the congregation, and their entrance
created a flattering stir. The two girls came first, primly
schooled, their stiffly starched frocks of pink and white
standing out over their pantaloons like umbrellas.
When they were deposited in the pew, Prince took his
place at the right of the pastor on the rostrum and per-
functorily bowed his head in prayer. The unctuous
smile of the Reverend Johnson greeted him with a spe-
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cial benignity, for was not Prince the only wholly sol-
vent member of his flock?
It happened this morning that the pastor took his
text from the incident of the Nazarene's writing in the
sand. The distressing state of national, international,
and local affairs the Reverend Johnson attributed to
the loose and lascivious living of mortals. He listed the
vices. Then he crowned his message with the thought
that current hard times were but writings in the sands
by which the Almighty let each one know that He was
not to be deceived by an outward show of good works.
Try as he might, Prince could not but imagine that
all eyes were fastened upon him while the pastor was
denouncing the sin of adultery. His reason cast the idea
aside. Why, he was the only paying member in the
church! Wasn't he deacon? The minister couldn't be
talking about him. Nevertheless, immediately after the
service Prince hurried in search of Amy. He had to stop
this talk.
Carrie, on the other hand, had been cheered by the
sermon. It bolstered her hope that the minister would
throw his moral support toward the solution of her
own domestic difficulty. She stopped him as he left the
pulpit and told her story, haltingly, head averted.
"Please, Elder,” she ended, “cain't you do somep'n
'bout it?"
The Elder stroked his chin meditatively. Had he
known his sermon would precipitate such a situation
as this, it never would have been preached. He wasn't
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a timid man in the pursuit of his divine mission. And
he was, essentially, a good man. But for all his conse-
cration to his calling, the Elder was cautious. He knew
of the financial support given the church by Prince. It
would be unwise to incur the man's enmity, especially
in times like these. It would be equally indiscreet to
ignore Carrie, who was a choir member, a substitute
organist, and a powerful financial agent in the Ladies'
Aid. The good cleric was, indeed, in a dilemma.
“It's a ticklish situation, Sister Carrie.” His ministe-
rial voice matched his troubled moon-like face. “But
for your sake I'll speak with Brother Prince. Maybe it's
all just a lot of gossip.”
III
The Reverend Johnson was never quite able to pray
away the effects of that brief consultation he had with
Jim Prince the next afternoon. It always brought the
jingle of thirty pieces of silver echoing down nearly
two thousand years of church history.
"Brother Prince,” he began, after first clearing his
throat ceremoniously.
Prince looked up from his desk where he was mak-
ing entries in a large, blue-backed ledger. The sum of
the money owed him had aroused him to an ugly frame
of mind. He was clearly annoyed by this visitor.
“Wal?” he demanded.
The Elder fingered his tie uneasily. This was going
to be trying! He coughed again.
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“Wal!” Prince repeated, and this time he squinted
squarely into the cleric's face.
The exclamation acted as a vocal stimulus and the
pastor blurted his mission:
"Er-uh-Sister Carrie's been telling me you ain't
been walking as straight in the path as you used to —
Prince leaned back in his chair, listening to the coax-
ing, pleading tones of righteousness. As he did so, he
thumbed the leaves of the ledger until he came to the
J's.
"Brother Johnson,” he interrupted. Shifting the blue
book around so that the Elder could see it plainly, he
pointed to the total entered under the caption,
Reverend I. Johnson
It amounted to fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents.
The visitor opened his mouth, shut it again, and gulped.
“My son-he's at the Institute—and these are hard
times, Brother Prince,” he offered lamely.
“When's de interest due on de church mortgage,
Rev’end?” asked Prince, shutting the ledger. Again the
Elder gulped.
"Well, to tell the truth, Brother Prince, it's due next
week,” he admitted. He mopped his face with a large
white handkerchief.
“Don't worry, Rev'end, Ah'll take care o' dat," as-
sured Prince. “Now—what was you a-sayin' when you
come in, Rev'end?”
“Why—why—nothing, nothing, Brother Prince.”
The words were spoken over the shoulder of the swiftly
retreating cleric.
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The shack where they stopped was a drab unpainted
affair with rags stuffed here and there at broken win-
dows. Inside was dirt and confusion.
Guided by a whimpering noise, Carrie and the doc-
tor went into a farther room where a mulatto girl lay
groaning on a soiled, rumpled bed. Beside her sat an
old hag-like woman, the mother. It was she who was
whimpering.
"Get her out of here, Carrie," ordered the doctor.
The woman, protesting, accompanied Carrie to the
kitchen, and while Carrie washed kettles and pans and
swatted at flies, heaped torrents of abuse on her daugh-
ter's betrayer. Carrie only half listened. She was think-
ing of her own life with Prince, and of what her mother
Martha had said about men, “Dey ain't none of 'em
worth it." How many women had to learn that for
themselves! And now that she had learned, how long
could she stand it? How long? ...
A little later Dr. Stevens was washing his hands after
a battle that had ended in defeat.
"First two we ever lost, Carrie,” he said, remorse-
fully. “Guess I'm getting too old.”
“Tain't yo’ fault, Doc' Stevens,” comforted Carrie.
“They jes' didn't have the right kind o vittals befo' the
chile come.”
Carrie did her best to restore order to the house-
no mean task. Then on her way home she stopped by
at the parsonage to inform the Reverend Johnson that
his services were needed. She did not linger over her
message, for recent events had shaken her faith in the
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brotherhood of Christians, and Ebenezer Church would
do without her in the future.
Jim Prince wiped his mouth and pushed himself
back from the table.
"Kin Blanche cook tol'able fair?"
“Why?” countered Carrie suspiciously. She'd seen
one of the Miles' farm-hands come out of the store on
her way home from the parsonage the afternoon before.
"Wal, Ah gots a job fo' her, efn she kin cook purty
fair."
"Where's the job?” Carrie's eyes narrowed.
“Out on Miles' farm. Two dollars a week ain't bad
fo' times like dey is — "
"She ain't goin'!” Carrie's tone was final. She pushed
her plate away and resolutely faced her husband across
the table.
The two girls, on either side of their parents, cringed
before the rising storm. They knew what to expect
when the big anger vein snaked up the center of
Prince's forehead, as it did now.
"Why?" he thundered, half-crouching in his chair.
His fingers bit like claws into the table cloth.
“She ain't a-goin'!" repeated Carrie. Her eyes, dead
black dots, seemed to recede into the brown mask of
her face. “You know why Annie Burns is dead. Them
dev'lish men out on Miles' would do the same to
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Blanche. You knows it. But she ain't a-goin'--you hear
me? She ain't a-goin'!"
“Huh! Jes' 'cause dat gal was frisky wid de mens
ain't no reason why Blanche got to be," answered
Prince. “ 'Sides, Ah’m losin' money every day 'count o’
de drought. Ain't no — ”.
“That's it! That's it! You wants to work her to death
like you did Jim! But you ain't a-goin' to do it! You
hear me, Jim Prince? You ain't a-goin' to do it!" Car-
rie's voice rose to an hysterical scream.
Then Jim Prince made the big mistake of his life.
“You dirty bitch!" He sprang to his feet, and sent
his chair crashing against the wall. “Ah brung you
down yere from dat whorehouse an' made you what you
is a 'spectable woman! An' now you tryin' to tell me
how to run mah 'fairs! Mind you' own damn business!
Dat's what you do!”
Carrie flinched as if from a sudden blow. All the ten-
derness, all the gratitude she'd had for this man,
withered like grass under a scorching sun. Words
droned from her, like the wintry winds that moan over
the lowlands.
“Ah don't owe you nothin'-nothin', Jim Princel Ah
worked fo' you, didn't Ah? Ah didn't complain 'cause
Ah didn't have no clothes like the rest o' the women.
An' Ah ain't complained when you bin runnin' 'round
wid another woman, have Ah?” She broke off, sobbing,
and sank into her chair. “Ah knowed it wouldn't last!
Ah told you so when you first asked me to come home
wid you.”
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Prince was not to be moved by his wife's tears, but
her reference to the Widow Jones infuriated him. He
made a second mistake.
“You gots a nervel” he snarled. “Efn Ah is runnin'
wid a woman, Ah ain't got no bastards by her. An' dat’s
mo'n you can say. Jes' 'cause Ah ain't never said nuffin'
'bout it, you thinks Ah don't know. But Ah knows you
got dat Martha by dat Rev'end Thomas. You dirty
- " He stopped short and involuntarily stepped back.
A swift change had come over Carrie. Her head had
shot erect. Veins stood out on her face like agonized
serpents, while little gibbering sounds issued from her
twisted lips. She bent forward in her chair, crouched,
then advanced slowly upon Prince. Her whole body
was shaking and hot tears streamed down her cheeks.
Then Jim Prince made his final mistake. He had
never laid an angry hand on Carrie, but now he stepped
forward and gave her a resounding slap. When he tried
to grasp her arms, Carrie with a wild scream launched
her body headlong into him. The impact caught Prince
squarely and knocked him breathless. He fell back-
ward with a groan, and Carrie followed up her advan-
tage by slashing her finger nails across his face. Her
strong teeth imbedded themselves in his throat; her
fists rained blows upon his head.
When she felt Prince grow limp under her, Carrie
rolled over on her side. As her anger ebbed, fear gripped
her. She looked at the still form of her husband. She
felt frantically for his heartbeat. Nothing! Panic-
stricken, she leapt to her feet and spun in a circle. Her
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eyes lighted on the girls, who still crouched in their
corner.
"Git mah clothes an' you-all's together, quick!" she
gasped.
Blanche stared at her father but made no move to
obey.
“Git the clothes, Ah say!” screamed Carrie.
Blanche made for the doorway leading to the stairs,
with the small Martha in her wake. Carrie rushed out
of the house and down the street to the Prince livery
stable.
Jim-Ed James was cleaning manure from the eight
stalls and gossiping with Charlie when he sighted Car-
rie dashing through the wide door. In his astonishment
at her disheveled appearance his chew dropped from his
mouth and he sidled cautiously out of her path.
"Hitch me two hosses to that carriagel” she com-
manded. “Hurry!" For the bewildered black hostler
only stood there popping his round eyes stupidly.
"Wh-what's de matter, Mis’ Carrie?” he questioned.
“Gimme them hosses an' that carriage, Ah tell you!
Them two." She pointed out a fine pair of blacks, trim,
sleek animals, the pride of Prince's stable.
"Mistah Jim he don't-" began Jim-Ed.
"Efn you wants to keep yo' job, you better do as Ah
says!” Carrie silenced him.
He hunched his shoulders resignedly and soon had
the carriage and horses ready.
"Wimmin sho is quare crittahs!” he commented as
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Carrie and the blacks disappeared through the stable
door. "Ain't never seed her act like dat befo'l”.
“Huh! What you care?" rejoined his companion,
“She ain't yo's, is she?"
III
SS
Prince came to shortly after Carrie left him. His
anger had flown and knowledge of his foolishness
weighed upon him.
"Carrie!” he called.
Hearing movements in the room above, he stumbled
into the hall. Blanche and Martha were coming down-
stairs. At sight of her father, Blanche dropped a large
bundle she carried and it rolled to Prince's feet, scat-
tering dresses, shoes, and other apparel.
“What you doin'?” demanded Prince.
“Mamma told me to get all our clothes together,"
answered the girl timidly.
"What fo'? Where's yo' mamma?”
"I don't know."
Galloping hoofbeats drew Prince's attention to the
street. He saw Carrie get out of the buggy and tie the
blacks to the horse-head hitching-post. Then she rushed
into the house, almost colliding with Prince.
“What you fixin' to do wid dat team?” he greeted her.
Carrie breathed her relief at seeing him alive but her
face hardened.
“Ah'm goin' away—that's what Ah'm fixin' to do!"
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"You ain't no sich-a-lie! You's mah wife an' Ah ain't
gwine let you!"
“Ah ain't askin' you to let me. Ah ain't askin' fo'
nothin' no mo’ from you!"
"You cain't take dem hosses!” cried Prince. “Ah'll
have de sheriff attah you!"
"Ah'm yo'wife, ain't Ah? What's yo's is minel Git
them clothes, Blanche!"
Prince changed his tactics.
“You cain't go an' leave me like dis, honey! You
knows Ah loves you."
"Don't you talk to me 'bout love, man!" Carrie burst
out. “Ah'm leavin'l An' them hosses an' that carriage
Ah counts as pay fo' eighteen years' hard work—an' fo'
you not ownin' yo' own chile-an' fo' you a-comin'
home from another woman! Ah'm leavin', an' efn you
tries to stop me Ah'll kill you! You hear me? Ah'll kill
you!”
With the bundle in one arm and little Martha under
the other, Carrie stormed out of the door and down to
the carriage. Blanche followed.
Attracted by the shouting, a knot of curious neigh-
bors had collected, most of them women. Carrie turned
on them with a laugh.
“There he is!” she cried, pointing to Prince, who
leaned weakly on the porch railing. “There he is. You
kin all have 'im now—the biggest man in town!” She
cracked the whip and the carriage lurched down the
street in a spreading sheet of dust. And the laugh hung
insanely on the hot air.
[89]


Chapter Twelve
'T WAS the same Jake Tillery, except that on this
warm Sunday afternoon in August he was a very
frightened man. The beads of perspiration on his
forehead were not alone the product of muscular
exertion. If the truth were told, this nattily
dressed, middle-aged man—who looked younger—was
trying to put as much distance as was possible between
himself and something. That was why, every so often,
he snatched a look over his left shoulder in the direc-
tion of the clump of woods bordering the white shell
road that led southward from the thriving town of
Eastland. After he had rounded a bend about two hun-
dred yards from the woods, and there was no sign of
pursuit, he collapsed in the meager shade of a scrubby
little mulberry tree.
While he wiped his face and nursed bruised lips which
seemed recently to have come in violent contact with
some hard object, he hurled invectives at unnamed in-
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dividuals. Then, having relieved himself to his satisfac-
tion on that score, he turned the stream of vituperation
upon himself. He was a thus-and-so and a thus-and-so
forever.
"You must is gittin' ole an' clumsy,” he muttered,
“lettin' a country buck ketch you wid three dices! Keep
on—you gwine have to work yet!” He emphasized the
"work” with abhorrence, and at the same time surveyed
his well-kept hands, the palms of which were smooth
and tender. “Reckon you better gone to Her'ford an'
ketch dat boat to Balt'more-guess de coppers done
fo’got you now. Wish somebody'd come 'long wid a
buggy so's Ah kin git past dat meetin'-ground. Dat man
sho want to cut me bad!”
He could not have done better had he rubbed Alad-
din's lamp, for in answer to his wish, a cloud of dust
swirled around the next bend in the road, headed in
the direction from which he had just come. Soon, two
dust-laden, black horses, drawing a carriage, trotted
up to where he stood waving his arms.
“Lady, kin you-all give me a lift to town?" he in-
quired, politely, of the road-weary Carrie. She looked
at him distrustfully, then bade him get in. As he clam-
bered up beside her, each recognized the other.
"Jake!” exclaimed Carrie, recoiling instinctively.
Jake stared open-mouthed.
“Fo’ de Lawd's sake, Carrie! Whar you bin all dese
years?"
Her first notion had been to drive him away. But sur-
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his yellow, speckled features. He struck out carefully
to offer .consolation. It worked. For four days Carrie
had been meandering blindly about three counties,
headed in a northwesterly direction, and she had
wanted someone to whom she could talk about her
troubles. She had found neither the courage nor the in-
clination for more than casual conversation with the
hospitable tenant-farmers who had given shelter to her
and the two girls. Now she poured out the whole story
to Jake.
Jake listened, interspersing sympathetic remarks,
while his agile mind worked swiftly in an entirely dif-
ferent direction.
“But whar is you goin'?” he questioned, pointedly.
“Ah don't know,” she answered. She looked back at
the two girls. Martha was asleep in Blanche's arms,
worn out from the inaction of a journey which had
had in the beginning every appearance of an outing.
The child was constantly fretful now, except when she
was asleep, and Carrie worried, knowing she was not
well. She had to find a place to pass the night.
“Look yere," offered Jake, as the idea he had been
pondering took form. "Whyn't you come to Her'ford
wid me? Dey say dat's a town what has good pickin's.
You an' me kin go there an'git set fo' de winter.
Dat's when de oyster-shuckers comes to town. Dey bin
tellin' me dem mens spends dey money like water
when de season's busy. We kin start a boardin'-house
an' make money hand over fist!" His hazel eyes glowed
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at the scheme. “Ah gots some money, an' you kin sell
yo' hosses an' carriage. We kin start on dat. Huh?"
Carrie's brows knitted in suspicious doubt. She hadn't
forgotten the Jake she had known.
Jake, divining her meaning, added, quickly: "You
don't have to worry 'bout me-we'll jes' be partners.”
“Ah ain't worried 'bout you," she informed him, a
hard quality in her voice. “Ah jes' want you to know
that you ain't dealin' wid no fooll Ah done had one
man to take 'vantage o' me, but ain't no mo' goin' to!
See? Ah'll go in wid you-be yo' partner-until you
starts gittin' wrong! An' when you does, we quits! See?
Now, where's this town?”
"Turn left in de next road an' keep goin'."
Jake grinned. “She ain't young no mo',” he told him-
self, “but she sho gots her good looks yit."
Herdford, at present, drowses through the years with
a medieval air of disdain for civic progress. But this lit-
tle water-locked hamlet was not always so. If you stop
along its one paved street-Front Street, the natives call
it-and inquire of any old inhabitant, he will tell you
of days when the diminutive Eastern Sho' town was the
seat of the county; how it used to be a center of the
oyster-packing industry before Milestown, over on the
Miles River, and Deerfield and Kent Island usurped
the honors. He may also point out, with sorrowful
pride, the site of the old military academy, now burned
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down, opposite Sam Newton's general store. The Pub-
lic Lot, they call it—a grove of maple, hemlock, and
walnut trees overlooking the placid ripples of the
Avondale River. Dusty chronicles record that once, in
Colonial days, Herdford was considered a possible site
for the city of Baltimore. Possibly because of disap-
pointment that they were passed by, the lowlands re-
main rustic, except for the enterprising towns of East-
land, Shrewsbury, and Bainbridge.
Even today Herdford seems to resent that early inter-
vention of Providence which stole from it the right to
be the queen city of Old Maryland. Like a jilted and
faded old lady with her hope-chest, it sits there between
its two rivers, the Avondale and Town Creek, on a
peninsula shaped like a boomerang, dreaming, perhaps,
of the glory that might have been its own; spurning the
industrial opportunities offered it by capitalists who
realize the commercial value of its location. "Nope!"
says thin-lipped, grizzled Kirkland, from the porch of
his green-shuttered, Colonial cottage facing the Meth-
odist church. “No-sireel" drawls Hallock, and his age-
molted eyebrows will meet over the shrewd gray eyes
of his highland ancestors, and he'll probably mount his
ancient bicycle and pedal down to the town pier to see
if his crab-steaming box is full. Ole Lady Nanny
Crichard will respond in like manner, and others of the
landed aristocracy who trace their lineage back to those
sturdy Scotch-Irish and English emigrants that first
forded Town Creek and settled on this curving spot of
land.
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These settlers were a conservative and complacent
lot. Along Back Street, that rutted dirt and shell road
that faces Town Creek and parallels Front Street (the
present avenue of the aristocracy) they built their
homes after the style of those they had left on the west-
ern shore of the Chesapeake: two-story houses, some flat-
roofed, others with roofs severely triangular. Time and
the elements have necessitated repairs, but on the whole
these buildings remain as they have always been, repre-
senting the original architecture of the town. And it is
here that the hardy crabbers and oysterers live.
Some of the emigrants were farmers and created dur-
ing the slave era the fertile fields one sees on either side
of the ten-mile pike bending westward from Eastland to
Herdford. But it was the combined oyster- and crab-
packing industry which ultimately pumped the life's
blood through the town's lazy veins. For the products
of the rivers offer an all-year occupation.
On the whole, though, Herdford is a sleepy town-
quaint, lazy, smugly self-satisfied; scoffing at the forward
strides of its neighbors in order to distract attention
from its own dullard ways.
III
“Here she is,” said Jake.
He pointed over the field at his right toward a wind-
ing river on whose shores could be seen the tops of
houses partly hidden by trees. The girls looked curi-
ously in the direction of their new home, but Carrie
was busy - the moment whipping the horses past a

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stretch of pine woods. The fragrance of the pine eluded
her; she noticed only the forest gloom and a ceaseless
whispering that struck unpleasantly on her ears. “Go
back!” the woods seemed to say. “Go back!” She ex-
perienced a sense of relief when the woods gave way
to a field of green sow beans. Yet the whisper lingered
in her ears.
“Look out!" Jake's voice rasped in her ears. She
reined the horses to an abrupt stop.
“Look at dat." He pointed to an object in the road,
a giant cat crouched on its haunches like an image
carved in ebony. Cold emerald eyes blinked in regal dis-
dain at the skittish horses. To Carrie, with the sinister
command of the woods still echoing, the animal was a
thing of menace.
Jake snapped the spell by clambering down and flick-
ing the whip threateningly. The cat arched its back and
spat before it relinquished the road. But even when
they had driven on its icy eyes followed them forbid-
dingly. Carrie, looking back, shuddered in sharp fear.
"You ain't sup'stishous, is you?" bantered Jake. But
his tone was false.
They had come to the little neck of land which forms
a natural bridge of oyster shells between the termina-
tion of Town Creek and a soggy marsh. Sailboats snug-
gled on the curving shore. A musty odor emanated from
the swampy waste. At this point the town abruptly
began.
“Yere comes some colored folks,” said Jake. “Ah'll
ask dem whar we kin git a place to sleep fo' de night.”
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An old couple approached dressed in their Sunday
best. The man reminded Carrie of Father Prince. His
white beard fringed a kindly weather-beaten face from
which his eyes peeped brightly out, like shiny brown
marblesage had not found him easy to destroy. He
leaned heavily on a gnarled stick.
“Good attahnoon to you." He lifted an ancient black
felt hat from a shiny pate in courtly deference to Car-
rie, and nodded cordially to Jake. The woman smiled
and bobbed her knee in a rheumatic curtsy.
"Speak a leetle loudah," the old man piped in answer
to Jake's query. "Ah'm a leetle deef-bin so fo' goin'
on nigh to fo'teen years. An' she”-nodding toward his
wife—“cain't hear none a-tall."
Finally Jake made him understand.
“Oh-'mongst-you wants lodgin'l” he exclaimed. "Ah
reckons you kin git it down to Tilton Street. 'Mongst-
you keeps right down dis yere street 'twell you comes to
Gus Hagen's corner sto'—but you don't turn dar! You
keeps on 'twell you comes to de bank an de colored
church an' den you sees de Public Lot right in front
o'Sam Newton's corner sto'. An' you keeps right on
past de white chillun's schoolhouse 'twell you gits to a
li'l' teeny street—but don't turn dar nuthah, 'cause
dat'll take you smack into Back Alley. So 'mongst-you
keep right on 'twell you pass Jim Pratt's big white
house an' right past de post-office-de next street to yo'
right is Tilton Street!"
Carrie thanked him for his explicit directions and
started the horses.
· [98]


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Tilton Street sloped gently downhill. For the most
part it was unshaded-worm-eaten tree stumps testi-
fied that the inhabitants had more use for fuel than for
beauty, but now and then trees in a front yard marked
a family not so pinched by the hard times. The first
three houses had some of the airs and graces of those
along the main street. They seemed to be striving to
hold aloof from the dwellings just below them, which
had frankly abandoned all pretence of refinement.
Carrie brought the dusty blacks to a stop in front
of the most superior house on the street—a white-and-
green cottage that was like a resplendently attired gen-
tleman in a crowd of tramps. There was a demeanor
about it at once haughty, condescending, and apolo-
getic. Two neatly dressed children, a boy and girl of
Martha's age, stopped their play to stare at the callers.
A man, who had a certain cocksureness about him that
reminded Carrie irritatingly of Prince, left the porch
and approached the carriage.
“ 'Mongst-you be strangers in town?" he ventured
as an opening. When he was assured that they were, he
introduced himself. “Mah name's Tom Winters-Cap'n
Tom, they calls me. Is there somep'n Ah kin do fo'
you?”
Jake stated their necd.
"Well, Ah tell you,” Winters said, after judicious
stroking of his sideburns, "you kin put up fo' the night
down to foot o' the street wid Mis' Gussie. That's the
only person what takes lodgers this time o' year. You
see that big field yonder to that big red house? Wal,
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Gussie she live right cross from there. . . . 'Mongst-
you say you from down to Shrewsbury way? Ah used to
run a barber shop down to Deerfield befo' the smallpox
broke out there. To be sho, now! An' all mah folks
come from down to Upper Hill. ..."
But Jake had slyly jerked the reins and the tired
horses pulled away before Winters could go more
deeply into his personal history.
IV
Gussie sat in a creaking chair propped against her dis-
reputable shack—a living replica of a Mongolian belly-
god. To Carrie, she looked a little like one of Prince's
brood sows. She sat there, with a litter of cats and
scratching chickens about her, swinging a fan and curs-
ing the flies which swarmed about, attracted by the
odor which her great fat body gave off.
"Dam' crabs!" she swore. “Makes dese flies light on
you same as bees on honey!” She appraised Jake with a
sweeping scrutiny. Carrie she eyed with hostility.
"Is you Mis' Gussie?” Carrie stepped back a pace to
get out of range of the unpleasant odor. The fat woman
noticed the movement.
"Efn you plans to stay in dis town," she said, “you
mought's well l'arn to git used to dis yere crab stink,
'cause ain't nuffin' you kin do to git it offn you once
you works in 'em.” Then she attended to Carrie's ques-
tion: “Yass, Ah'm Mis' Gussie-an' you kin leave off
de Mis'. What do 'mongst-you want?”
Çarrie told her. "Wal'," she wheezed, “Ah kin put
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you up fo' de night, but Ah ain't sayin' as how it'll be
so comf'table. Ah warn't 'spectin' nobody befo' oyster
season on 'count o' de drought done stopped de cannin'-
house from openin' up. You kin stay efn you like. ...
You plannin' on shuckin?” She looked dubiously at
Jake's smooth, slender hands.
"We was thinkin' 'bout openin' up a boardin'-house,
efn de season's good,” answered Jake.
Gussie turned a shrewd eye on Carrie's good looks.
"H'm-'mongst-you man an’ wife?" she asked.
“No!” replied Carrie, emphatically.
“Oh...." The fat one's tone was a little more cor-
dial. “What kind o' a boardin'-house you gwine have?"
and she raised a significant eyebrow.
"A boardin’-house!" snapped Carrie.
“All right—all right. ..."
With a heave Gussie struggled to her feet. At the
small doorway of the house she took a sidewise stand,
then with the skill of long practice eased herself through.
The interior was what one would have expected from
a view of the yard. The room they entered was stuffy
and low-ceilinged, so small that it seemed some part of
Gussie must protrude at any moment. The walls had
once been whitewashed, but now the surface hung in
loose brown patches which occasionally became de-
tached and fell to the floor. A multitude of flies buzzed
about the remnants of a meal which lay on a dingy
table. Against one wall was a greasy couch holding the
inert form of an under-sized man. Gussie delivered a
blistering epithet in his direction as she waddled past
in search of a bottle and glasses.
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“Drink up, folks,” she invited. “Ah'm goin' up to
git you-all's rooms ready.” With that she unlatched the
door to the flight of narrow stairs and began her labori.
ous way upward, attended by a cloud of flies.
“Come on an' drink,” said Jake, already on his second
glass. His spirits were nothing dashed by the squalor of
the surroundings. This was what he had known with
Sue.
Carrie started to refuse, but hesitated. She hadn't had
a drink since she left Baltimore-nothing stronger than
the sweet wine Prince kept in the house for festive oc-
casions. Why should she refuse now? The old life with
Prince was gone. She was starting all over again ...
to be her own boss ... to do just as she pleased.
She went to the table and poured a stiff drink. Then
another.
“Mamma, can we have some, too?" piped Martha.
Carrie lowered her glass for a moment, but thought:
"Oh, hell! Ah'll do what Ah wants! An' efn Ah ketch
'em drinkin' Ah'll hide 'em good-fashion!”
Blanche watched her mother in amazement.
Jake, his eyes ablaze, poured Carrie a third drink but
did not offer it to her. He was smart.
"Time you gals was in bed," Carrie said, recalling
her maternal duties. “Do you hear me?" The whisky
was rapidly taking possession of her and making her
temper short.
“Yes'm!” Blanche pulled Martha to the stairs.
Now Carrie began to drink in earnest, in short, quick
swallows.
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“Jes' like old times,” Jake ventured, lighting the stub
of a cigar.
"Yass,” agreed Carrie, absently. She smiled.
“Never reckoned Ah'd see you ag'in, sartin'.”
"Nope-reckon so. ... You still gamblin', eh?”
“A li'l'," Jake admitted. “Ah calc'lates to make
somep'n in dis yere town.” A thought struck him.
“Look yerel Ah ain't seed no signs o' a saloon when we
was a-comin' down de street. Reckon we could sell
likker in de house when we git started? Ah could go to
Balt'more an' git some good stuff. Den we could cut it."
Carrie nodded drunkenly. “ 'Course—'course," she
assented.
Gussie came grunting down the stairs. "Yo' rooms is
ready,” she panted. She gulped a drink, then offered the
bottle to Carrie. "To ease dat hiccup, honey,” she ex-
plained.
Carrie acted on the suggestion. Suddenly the room
began to perform crazy antics. Now it rocked like the
boat had done that night on her way from Baltimore
with Prince. Now it whirled like the big ferris wheel
at the carnival to which Jim had taken her that first
summer. Finally she sagged forward on the smelly table.
From afar off she heard Jake tell Gussie that he'd take
care of her. After that she knew no more.
Blanche awoke just before dawn to the humming
accompaniment of mosquitoes and the fretful activities
of bedbugs. Sitting up, she peered through the dark-
ness for her mother. But the space she had purposely
left on the far side of the bed was vacant.
[103]


Chapter Thirteen
ARRIE lost no time in disposing of the horses
and carriage, and with the proceeds she
bought a house. This was the way it hap-
pened:
Sid Hooper, proprietor of the livery stable
on Front Street, saw the blacks and marked the excel-
lent condition of the carriage. The sight aroused cov-
etous desire. But Carrie had not listened in vain to
Prince's bartering in horseflesh. She drove a hard bar-
gain. At first the white man feigned indifference. He said
"naw-sirree," and hemmed and hawed. But Carrie
found his Achilles' heel when she threatened to drive
to Eastland for the sale.
“Wal,” he finally conceded, “I'll give ye two hun-
dred an' fifty dollars an' not a dern cent more!"
“Mister,” Carrie answered, "you don't want them
horses an' that buggy—that's sartin'l Ah knows Ah kin
git three hundred easy. So Ah reckons Ah'll go on over
to Eastle The turned away.

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“Hold on yere-hold on!” exclaimed Hooper. He
raked his chin with a nervous hand and drowned a
cluster of stable flies beneath a squirt of tobacco juice.
"Take three hundred-an' I'm a dern ole fool!"
Carrie paused as if reflecting. She was really de-
lighted. “All right-let's git the papers ready," she said
with elaborate reluctance.
Sid Hooper eyed this soft-spoken woman probingly.
What the devil did she know about a bill o'sale?
“Looka yere—ye be a stranger in town, ain't ye?"
he asked.
Carrie nodded.
“Ye goin' to work in oysters?”
"Ah was reckonin' on runnin' a boardin'-house."
"Oh ... I see. ..." Sid eyed her appraisingly, tak-
ing in all her points of beauty. There was not a great
deal exposed in those days of ground-sweeping dresses,
but even then the practiced eye could discern much.
“Ye got a house?"
"No. Ah jes' got in town yestiddy."
Hooper's face lighted. “Yestiddy? H'm. ... Looka
yere, I got a house-a brick house-down thar jes' offn
Tilton Street. I'll sell it to ye cheap. Ye kin have it fo'
two hundred an' fifty dollars an' a lease on them
grounds for as long's ye like. That'll give ye fifty dollars
left out the whole bargain-an' ye cain't do better'n
that ef ye go in all the nine counties! What ye say?"
Carrie looked her incredulity. She had seen the house
that morning. It seemed in good condition except for
broken windowpanes. And for two hundred and fifty.
... But her appreciation of a good bargain was strong.
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“Ah'll give you two hundred,” she stated, calmly.
“What!” Hooper sprang from his desk. “Ye mean to
stand thar an'offer me two hundred dollars for a
brick house?"
“Never mind,” answered Carrie, coolly and with a
shrug, “jes gimme the money. There's other shacks. ..."
Hooper wilted. She was too much for him. And, for
reasons known throughout the town, he wanted to be
rid of that house. If he allowed her to talk to any
one ...
"All right—all right," he said, and the bargain was
closed.
So Carrie came into possession of the Red Brick
House. But the bargain, that appeared so desirable at
first glance, was not altogether satisfactory. Big Gussie
made clear the weakness of the deal.
"Lawsy, honey!” she exclaimed, when she heard Car-
rie's news. " 'Mongst-you ain't gwine live in dat house?”
“How come Ah ain't?” Carrie wanted to know. “Ah
bought it!"
"Lawsy, chile! Dat house is ha'nted!”
“Ha'nted!" Jake and Carrie exclaimed in one breath.
"Sho! Law-aw-dee! Lissen yere. ..." Gussie went
into a long story, the gist of which was as follows:
The Old Brick House had been built by a tonger
(one who gathers oysters by means of long-handled
rakes, or tongs) ten years or more ago. He and his
wife lived happily there for nearly half a year. Then,
after two days' search, fellow tongers found the man's
bloated, blue-faced body on the far side of the Avon-
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dale. His widow remained in the house for a week
following the accident then she suddenly sold it to Sid
Hooper and left town.
The house stayed vacant for perhaps six years before
Lottie Turner rented it in a fit of defiance to escape
her mother's counseling tongue. Some three months
later, on a gusty March day, two truant schoolboys
spied a bobbing, hairy object under Gallion's wharf. It
was Lottie's water-grayed body.
No one dared to occupy the Old Brick House after
that incident. But there was another happening to
augment the eerie legend. One dark night Tilton Street
had been startled from its peaceful slumbers by piteous
cries of “Murder! Murder!" In the morning the faint-
hearted residents investigated the Old Brick House,
from which the cries had come, and verified their ex-
pectations. A tramp lay dead on the porch with blue
marks of fingers on his swollen neck. In the pockets of
his ragged trousers were found seven pairs of dice;
when thrown, all of them turned up "seven" or
"eleven.”
So for the past three years the Old Brick House had
stood deserted. Boys had used its windows for target
practice until they yawned like the dark mouths of
caves. The natives hurried past it after dark, whistling
vociferously. In the early hours before dawn, crabbers
and tongers, if possible, traveled another route to their
boats lying at the wharves on Town Creek. The Old
Brick House was a pariah.
“Ah'm tellin' you,” Gussie concluded her sanguinary
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history, "it's dead bad luck! Efn 'mongst-you wants to
keep outn trouble, you better not live in dat place!"
Carrie and Jake were visibly shaken. But Carrie
thought of the money she had spent. Two hundred
dollars was too large a sum to be sacrificed.
"Damn de ha'nts!” she exclaimed.
A month later, one warm afternoon in September,
Jake sat on the porch. He was more than satisfied with
his lot. He was inclined to be complacent.
Under Carrie's capable hands the house had under-
gone a transformation. It was no longer vacant-eyed.
The windowpanes had been replaced and now showed
bright new curtains. Every room had been calcimined
and the floors had been scoured until they looked like
bread-boards. Some second-hand furniture completed
the change. From all appearances, the Old Red Brick
House was no longer the meeting-place for troubled
spirits.
But more pleasing to Jake than the house was his
conquest of Carrie. Her mature charms were vastly
more alluring than her youthful charms had been, and
Jake fancied himself as the Great Lover. He did not
take into account Prince's long neglect. He did not
know that to Carrie he was but as sweetened hot water
when no tea is available.
Carrie came to the door, a dust-cap protecting her
hair, and stood there a moment, surveying him in
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silence. A small pucker gathered at the bridge of her
nose. She spoke softly—too softly:
“Ah needs some mo' wood, Jake."
Jake started at the sound of her voice, then eased
back into his chair.
"All right, honey," he said, but there was no honey
in his voice. “Ah'll cut a li'l' attah while. ..." He set-
tled more comfortably on the end of his spine.
"Ah needs it now," said Carrie, still softly. But the
pucker deepened.
“Oh, cain't Blanche chop some?" offered Jake, plain-
tively. He didn't move.
This was the proverbial last straw. For the past four
weeks she had put up with his sloth. Now her leashed
feelings broke loose.
“Lissen yere, man!” she grated through clenched
teeth. “Efn you thinks you gwine squat 'round this
house a-doin' nothin' all the time, you gots another
think comin'l This is mah house! You ain't put a red
cent in it! Now befo' you sleeps in mah house another
night, you's gwine to give me some o' that money you
said you had when Ah picked you up! An' efn you
cain't cut a li'l' wood now an' then, you kin git the
hell out! An' stay out!" With that, Carrie slammed her
way back to her work.
Jake was shocked; so much so that he arose like one
who suddenly realizes that the object he sits upon is
an intensely hot stove. The ultimatum echoing in his
ears, he made a direct line to the back yard and, in the
same breath, industriously engaged the wood-pile. The
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chips flew. But soon his fine flare of energy died and his
hazel eyes narrowed rebelliously. His masculine vanity
had been bruised.
That night after the girls had gone to bed, Carrie
soothed his injured pride by wiles she had never before
exercised. She did it as an experiment. She held no
tenderness for Jake, but she went through the process
of cuddling and caressing as a scientist tests a theory.
It sufficed, for Jake, completely deceived, handed over
nearly all his money into her keeping.
Carrie was progressing rapidly in ways that would
have surprised members of the Ebenezer Ladies' Aid.
The obedient wife of Jim Prince, so soft-spoken and
retiring, who had walked so decorously in the conven-
tional paths, was disappearing as if by magic. And in
her place there was emerging the Carrie Prince who is
still a subject for discussion among the older gossips of
Herdford.
As a property-owner she had credit at all the stores.
So she bought silks and calicos from which she cre-
ated dresses that aroused waves of jealousy among the
feminine population. Puffed sleeves exaggerated her
magnificently wide shoulders and emphasized in con-
trast her slender waistline which sloped into shapely
hips; while tight bodices revealed to perfection the ma-
ture beauty of her bust. Carrie was aware of her good
looks and she made the most of them. As she emerged
from the sarcophagus of unbecoming garments, her
whole demeanor changed. She studied her carriage, un-
til her walk became a movement in voluptuous rhythm.
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There was no obvious switching of the hips, but
through suggestion Carrie achieved a most telling ef-
fect, and her passage down the street was a signal for
the turning of heads. One man, in a poetic mood, said
she was like "a willow tree when de wind hits it.” The
women were less kind. “Look at the hussy strut!” they
grumbled among themselves. But Carrie, holding her
head high in the pride of her newly found power, went
her oblivious way.
III
It required only one visit to Gallion's crab-house to
decide Carrie against picking crabs, and anyone who
has done this work will not readily condemn her. It is
an odious labor.
The crab-house sat on that point of land known as
The Island, at the juncture of the Avondale and Town
Creek. Originally a swampy waste caused by the tidal
flow, it had been built up to usefulness by an accumu-
lation of oyster shells. A neck of soggy land isolated it
effectively from the town of Herdford proper.
Gussie went along with Carrie in the capacity of
guide, and enjoyed her rôle to the full. She was hugely
amused when at the door of the crab-house she saw
Carrie's nose go up in delicate disdain at the over-
whelming stench which greeted them. It was no won-
der. There is nothing more revolting than the smell of
steamed crabs, and the day was hot.
“Dat stink'll stay right yere 'twell dey starts to
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shuckin' oysters,” Gussie said, cheerfully. “An' Ah don't
know what's de worst-crabs or oysters."
They continued to the wharf, where a large oblong
wooden box swung on iron rods and gave off jets of
vapor from under a stained sailcloth cover. This was
where the crabs were steamed, Gussie explained. The
steam was supplied from a boiler near by.
Two boats bobbed just below the wharf's edge, their
masts wrapped in their sails and reclining along the
gunwales. A red-headed white man and a Negro talked
and joked as they worked.
Carrie moved toward the Negro to see better what he
was doing. As she approached he removed his hat.
“Ah’m baitin' mah line fo' tomorrow,” he answered
her query. Then he went on with his task.
Carrie's first impression was that this was the blackest
and the biggest man she had even seen; his teeth the
whitest and his eyes the strangest green-gray. Moreover,
he was the only man in Herdford who had looked at
her without ogling her. She wanted to know more
about him.
“What do you use for bait?” she asked, to be saying
something.
"Tripe,” he answered, without looking up. It could
have been a rebuff.
"Why do you throw 'way them pieces?” She pointed
to some floating scraps of whitish meat which were
being attacked by a cluster of minnows.
The suspicion of a smile flickered across his face.
"Some o' dese crabs," he explained, “dey's like some
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folkskindah partic'lar 'bout who dey eats attah. So
Ah changes de bait to please dey appetites.” The smile
flashed out frankly for a second and then was smothered.
“Oh, you's jes' jokin' me!” answered Carrie, also
smiling.
The man looked up long enough to sweep his eyes
methodically over her figure and take in the full extent
of her beauty. This time his smile flashed approval.
"Who is you, lady? Stranger in town, ain't you?”
“Mah name's Carrie Prince. Ah bin yere goin' on a
month now."
“Oh—so you's Carrie Princel" He resumed his work
with a finality that checked the rejoinder Carrie was
about to make.
A boat drifted in with more crabs and the black
man shoved away from the wharf to make room for the
new arrival. Carrie turned to Gussie.
"Who's that man, Gussie?” Carrie nodded to the
drifting boat with its solitary occupant.
“Lew Grundy?" asked Gussie. “Why, he's de head
deacon over to Winters' Meth'dist church. An' he ain't
no hypocrite. He don't chew or smoke or drink or mess
wid women-leastways Ah ain't never seed 'im foolin'
'round. An you ought hear dat man sing an' pray!"
"Huh! So he's a deacon?" Carrie sneered.
A wizened little man named Tommy Dyke—Carrie
recognized him as the drunk she had seen on Gussie's
sofa—was busily shoveling the steamed crabs from the
box into baskets and rusty boilers which stood about.
As if in answer to a signal, more than a score of women
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and children swarmed out onto the wharf, cursing and
jostling each other in their haste to retrieve their recep-
tacles. One old woman was almost pushed into the
water.
“Don't you dast tech dat boiler!” an ancient hag
screamed. “Dat's mah red string on it an' you knows it!
You li'l' hussy!"
A mulatto with Titian hair took a belligerent stand
with hands on hips. "Huh! You's so old you cain't even
tell yo' own things! Try to tech itl” she dared.
"You young snipper-snaps ain't got no 'spect fo' yo'
elders, dat's what?" the old woman complained, sniffling.
“ 'Spect!" And with that the mulatto snatched up
the boiler and disappeared into the crab-house.
Tommy Dyke stood there unmoved by all the clamor.
Now and then he paused indifferently to mop his bald
knob of a head with a filthy bandanna. When he had
finished distributing the crabs he righted the steam box
and swung a fresh barrel of live crabs into it.
Carrie peered over the top of the box at the crawling,
clawing creatures awaiting a vaporous death. They were
making valiant but unsuccessful efforts to climb the
smooth sides of the boiler. Every time one would secure
a precarious foothold a struggling neighbor would pull
it back.
“Dey's jes' like folks,” said a deep voice at Carrie's
side. “Efn one cain't git out, he ain't gwine let another
git out."
She turned to face Lew Grundy. Again she thought
she had never seen a man so big, and was disturbed.
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"Ain't seed you at church,” he observed.
The sense of disturbing enchantment which the man's
size evoked was shattered now.
"Ah don't go to church,” said Carrie, frigidly, and
swayed into the crab-house, exhibiting her newly found
grace of deportment.
The incessant murmur of voices interspersed by the
cracking of knives upon some brittly substance met
Carrie at the door. She saw Gussie's broad, yellow face
topping a pile of crabs on one of the center tables. As
she stood at Gussie's elbow, watching the picking proc-
ess, many sidelong glances were cast in her direction.
At first the swiftly moving hands of the four women
at the table were to Carrie a jumbled series of quick
stabs and slices. For her benefit, Gussie picked one more
slowly. She first tore off the obular, pointed back, then
picked the meat from its sections. The largest particles
she deposited in a separate pan.
"Dat's de lump meat,” she explained. “Taste it."
Carrie, selecting an extra large one, found it so deli-
cious that she rapidly followed it with others.
“Help yo'self," bade Gussie. “You'll git sick of 'em
efn you stay yere long enough.” Taking a big claw, she
continued: “Yere's how you git de meat out'n dis.” She
brought her knife down with splintering precision. The
shell dropped off and disclosed the yellowish-brown
muscle.
"Ain't you scared o' cuttin' yo' hands?” asked Carrie.
"Huh! When you does dis season in an' season out,
you don't know what cuttin' yo' hand is."
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A high soprano began to hum a dragging tune. Other
voices came to its assistance.
“Dere is rest fo' de weary-
Dere is rest fo' de weary-
Oh, dere's rest fo' de weary-
Dere is rest fo' mel
“On de other side o' Jordan-
In de green fields o' Eden-
Where de tree o' life is a-bloomin'-
Dere is rest fo' mel"
Innumerable verses, improvised by the pickers at differ-
ent tables, carried the lyric on and on until it wavered
and died. Over in a corner, a ray of sunlight fought its
way through a splotched window and lighted the re-
posed faces of two infants. Unmindful of flies and the
heat simmering through the tin roof, they slumbered,
lulled by the mournful strain.
[116]


Chapter Fourteen
UMMER broke abruptly about a week after Car-
rie's explosion to Jake. The sun tried to hold its
own, but there was clear evidence that fall was
no longer to be denied. Dropping leaves red-
dened and yellowed the Public Lot and littered
the bricks under the arch of maples down Front Street.
Wild geese streamed southward over the Avondale.
One by one the crabbers laid aside their lines and took
their tong shafts and rusty rakes to young Tom Ridgely,
the blacksmith, for repairs. Fewer and fewer crabs came
into the wharves until, on the last day of September,
the rival houses on the Island and on Town Pier sent
no blasts shrieking to the skies. The crabs would have
peace until the following summer.
With the crabbing season ended, the oyster season was
on, and now the town awoke to full life. For two weeks
boats, trains, wagons, and all manner of horse-drawn
conveyances brought men and women-sometimes
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whole families—to swell the colored population. Most
of the incoming oyster-shuckers were men. They came
from Virginia and points as far south as North Caro
lina. And the majority came by way of Baltimore on the
steamers Avalon and Talbot.
One of these boats touched Herdford every night on
its way to Eastland Point, which was the last stop on its
route. From Monday to Friday the vessel slunk into
Town Wharf at about midnight; then, its obligations
discharged, departed with expeditious haste. But Satur-
day night was different. Saturday night was Jug Night.
No matter what the weather, when the first blast of
the steamer was heard, nearly all the men of the town
who had reached their majority would take themselves
hurriedly to the wharf. Here, in the dim light of the
kerosene lamps which perched on the walls of the
freight-house, they would wait eagerly for the boat to
dock with a great splashing of her side wheels.
Their patience was rewarded when, after passengers
and merchandise had been transferred, the stevedores
would march single file down the gangplank, each swing-
ing a jug in either hand. The jugs were deposited in the
freight-house. Then there was a grand rush as the wait-
ing men bore down upon the freight agent, who shouted
out the names which tagged the necks of the containers.
Every man eventually was awarded a jug. The greedier
ones opened theirs on the spot, slung them over the
crooks of their arms and gurgled happily—and as they
gurgled the trials of the week washed away.
Sunday night also was a gala night at the wharf, for
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after a day of rest the residents of the sleepy village were
prime for any diversion that chance or circumstance
offered. A queen and her imperial train could not have
received more homage than the side-wheeler from Bal-
timore as she swung around Tom's Point into the Avon-
dale from Choptank River. Idlers from Front and Til-
ton streets dashed headlong to the waterfront. Children
raced to see who could get to the wharf first. Their
elders, out for a walk, accelerated their pace. And as
the boat came splashing to rest, with a final shrill blast
of her whistle, horses reared and pitched, and the more
timid watchers clutched at each other in giggling fright.
Jim Tutley, the shipping agent, his magnificently
curled mustachios erect, was a paragon of authoritative
pride on such occasions.
“Haul away!” he would bawl after he had slipped
the wide nooses of the lead line over stout pilings at
each wharf corner.
From that moment until the boat's departure, the
proceedings took on a certain ritualistic cast. The
roustabouts rushed here and there, clearing a space, re-
moving a bar-every movement an incident in a pre-
arranged plan. Then the gangplank was shot over the
boat's side, a waist-high railing was attached, and a re-
splendent personage in blue uniform advanced to snarl:
“All off 'at's goin' off!”
First the white passengers disembarked, the women
throwing timid glances at the water yawning darkly
below. After them came the Negro passengers, the
oyster-shuckers—swaggering, teeth flashing. Freight was
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unloaded, outgoing freight was hauled aboard. New
passengers arrived. The gangplank was withdrawn. A
shrill whistle. The waters churned. And in a minute
more the steamer had rounded the bend toward East-
land Point.
Jim Tutley extinguished the lamps and locked the
great sliding doors, and once more the wharf was a
patch of darkness against the gently swelling river.
[120]


Chapter Fifteen
Y THE middle of October Carrie had all of her
rooms rented. She would accept only male
lodgers, for the women who drifted into Herd-
ford after the oyster season was in full swing
brought memories of A'n Sue's bawd-house.
They swaggered into Carrie's kitchen in their cheap,
flashy clothes, and when Carrie refused them quarters
they switched out saucily and over to Gussie's, where
there were no restrictions. That fat one had an eye for
business. How twelve women could live in her squalid
five-room shack was a mystery. But they did, and they
brought their landlady handsome remuneration.
At Thanksgiving time Gussie bloomed in new finery,
and took occasion to twit Carrie for her prudery.
"Ah don't care,” Carrie answered bluntly. “Ah ain't
goin' to have mah gals a-larning dirt from them hussies.
'Sides, Ah makes enough from mah likker an' rooms
an' board.”
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Jake also protested, only to discover that he had made
the wrong move. His stock had never been very high
with Carrie. She had refused to permit gambling in the
house. Now she had the opportunity she wanted to tell
him what she thought of his carrying-on with a strum-
pet across the way. She did so in no uncertain terms,
and when she had finished Jake knew that his brief
reign was over.
"You thinks Ah'm going to let you run with that
Nellie gal over to Gussie's and then bring yo'self to me?
Huh! You's jes' as wrong as you kin be. You turns mah
stomach, anyways!” She grimaced. “You kin stay yere-
but that's all!"
Jake growled evilly, but said nothing.
Though Carrie's life from this point was irreproach-
able, Herdford saw what it saw and drew its own con-
clusions. It saw men staggering from the Red Brick
House at all hours of the day and night. It saw that
Carrie was a friend of Mis' Gussie, a known bawd. It
was said that she drank and smoked. It was rumored
that by her own admission she was not married to the
gambler Jake. Finally, her good looks and her arrogant
walk was proof positive that she was not what she
should be.
The girls complained that no one would play with
them at recess, or sit next to them at Sunday school.
“Never mind,” Carrie soothed. “You-all ain't gwine
have to stay yere all the time. Blanche, you is goin' to
the Institute next year. An' soon's Martha's old enough
she's goin' too. Don't you mind.”
But they did mind.
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II
About this time little Martha became something of a
sensation.
The women from Baltimore had brought a new dance
to town—the cake-walk-and nothing would do but
Carrie and Gussie must learn it. A slender girl with
short hair, moody black eyes, a reedy soprano, and a
gift with the guitar provided music. When she had had
three or four drinks Gussie's poor shack rang to the
sound of a lively tune and strutting feet. Gussie's two
hundred pounds were a serious liability when the dance
called for perilous balancing with knee raised and back
parallel with the floor, but Carrie mastered the dance's
intricacies with a natural grace.
One Saturday morning as Carrie was scrubbing the
kitchen floor she missed Martha's chatter in the back
yard where she had been holding conversation with a
stray kitten. She called to Blanche, who was upstairs,
tidying the lodgers' rooms.
"I don't know where she is, Mamma," Blanche an-
swered, “unless she's over to Mis' Gussie's.”
Carrie hurried across the crusted road, to be met
with a burst of laughter and the strumming of a guitar.
"G'on, gall” she heard as she neared the door.
“Lookit dat li'l' un go!"
"Walk dat cake, honey! Bless yo' heart!”
"Her kin whip her mammy, sho's yo' bo’n!"
There in the center of the room, surrounded by an
enthralled audience of men and women, was Martha,
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her braids tossing, her slight body swaying to the
rhythms of the cake-walk. Every so often little squeals
escaped her. Carrie had her mouth all fixed to scold
the child when, with a final turn around the circle, she
bent her pliant back parallel to the floor and strutted
right into her mother's skirts.
The chastening words died on Carrie's lips at the
impish gesture. And Martha's career as an entertainer
began. After this, when Gussie had company, the eve-
ning wasn't complete until Martha had danced at least
one cake-walk.
III
"Larnin' dat chile to dance!" said Laura Titman to
Etta Curley. “She ought be 'shame' herself!"
Laura was the portly woman who sold pastries and
home-made ice-cream savoring strongly of cornstarch.
Etta was a slattern, her good looks destroyed by child-
bearing and years of drudging over laundry tubs. Be-
tween them they set the pace for Herdford gossip. And
they were so generous with their store of information
that their opinions were very apt to be shared soon by
all their neighbors.
[124]


Chapter Sixteen
HE Good Brothers' Hall-a magnificent
structure of red tin—had had a thorough
scouring by the Brothers' wives. Bunting in
many colors draped the ceiling and walls of
the assembly-room. The platform was gay
with paper streamers in honor of the Bainbridge band.
Long tables of smooth planks mounted on saw-horses
and spread with new oilcloth bordered three walls. An
inviting smell of fried oysters pervaded the place. It was
December, and the annual oyster supper and dance was
in full swing.
On this occasion the colored people of Herdford were
the guests of the rival barons of the oyster industry,
Kirkland and Gallion. These gentlemen sat now di-
rectly in the center of the table at the end of the room,
trying for the moment to cloak their differences in a
semblance of good-will. To their right was the Rever-
end Raymond, shepherd of the colored flock. And flank-
ing these dignitaries were the foremen and the tongers
of the rival houses. Those of lesser station sat at the side
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tables, while some of the younger generation, who were
of no station at all, lounged in chairs by the door, im-
patiently waiting their turn at table.
The usual speeches were delivered-polite and la-
bored speeches by the two hosts which combined cajol-
ery with flattery, a long-winded speech by Gallion's fore-
man, Bud Saunders. Then Kirkland and Gallion slipped
thankfully out of the side door and the company, just
as thankfully, relaxed for the good time which was the
real business of the evening. Conversation got louder.
Laughter rang truer. Drink flowed more freely.
Carrie, who had been persuaded to come by Tom
Bentley, was thoroughly enjoying herself in a new blue
velvet gown of her own making. It didn't matter that
little groups of buzzing women indicated her with sly
nods and a turning up of the nose. The men more
than made up for any neglect by their spontaneous at-
tentions. For them, gossip simply enhanced her charms.
They hung on every word she uttered. They leaped to
fill her glass with beer from the barrel at the corner of
the stage. They swarmed for dances.
There was only one man who had nothing to say to
her. That was Deacon Grundy, who sat at the table
opposite her and fastened her relentlessly with his gray-
green cats' eyes until she felt them sinking into her
flesh. She threw up her chin defiantly, angry that he
could put her out of ease, and met his look straight.
The suspicion of a smile crossed his dark face, and
against her will she smiled in return.
Just then a shout rang out.
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“Look out! Tom Bentley's gonna shoot!"
The screams of frightened women split the air and
there was a mad scramble for doors and windows. Some
of the company disappeared beneath tables. Carrie, pin-
ioned between table and wall, looked wildly around for
a place to hide, then relaxed in relief. It was a false
alarm.
Tom Bentley had a reputation for using his forty-
five-caliber pistol on the slightest provocation, so when
he rose above Bud Saunders with his arm upraised, a
glinting knife in his great fist, onlookers naturally ex-
pected action. But there was no anger on his blunt
square-featured face.
"Ah tells you, Bud,” he was roaring, “dem Broad
Creek oysters ain't wort' de trouble it takes to git 'em!”
And he brought his huge hand down on the table with
a splintering crash. Then he flopped into his seat be-
side Bud and they continued their spluttering but ami-
able argument. Both were too lager-logged to realize the
disturbance they had caused.
Grinning sheepishly, the guests emerged from hid-
ing and drifted back to their places. And now the Bain-
bridge band, famed in several counties, struck up in
earnest. Soon the floor was crowded with whirling,
laughing couples. There were some, however-staunch
church members like Cap'n Tom Winters, Etta Curley,
and Laura Titman—who regarded dancing in the light
of unholy revelry and took their pious ways home.
Later in the evening Carrie had just finished a solo
cake-walk when another incident shattered the peaceful
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gayety of the occasion. Daisy had stood all she could of
Ike's attentions to one of Gussie's women. She had put
up with the taunts of her friends long enough, and the
time had come to exact her dues. Swaggering out of the
corner where she had been contemplating her desertion,
she caught her lover by the shoulder and wrenched him
from his dancing partner. In a second the three were
the center of a crowd.
“Ike Brown, Ah'd like to speak wid you!” Standing
there, hands on her twitching hips, Daisy was a menac-
ing figure.
"Sho, honey," grinned Ike, “go right ahead.” A quan-
tity of beer had put him in a happy frame of mind.
And besides, he enjoyed evidence that his gal was
jealous.
“What you means by flirtin' wid dis hussy?"
“Who you callin' a hussy?" demanded Callie, and
there was that in her manner which welcomed a fight.
“Look yere, Daisy," began Ike, placatingly, "tain't
no harm fo' me to dance wid Callie - "
“Don't you try to soft-talk me, Ike Brown!” inter-
rupted Daisy. She snatched her arm from his grasp and
turned again to Callie. "Yass, you's a hussy! An' Ah
ain't scared to tell you so, too!”
Suddenly, from somewhere on her person, Daisy
flashed an open razor, and with a quick movement
spun away from hands reached out to restrain her. Her
face contorted by a snarl that revealed ugly purple
gums, she advanced slowly on the trembling Callie.
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“Don't let her cut me!" Callie's distended eyes
searched wildly for some means of escape.
Then Tom Bentley's bellow broke into the hubbub.
“Drop dat razor or Ah'll shoot sho'n hell!”
There was no question in anyone's mind but that
he would do as he said. Daisy dropped the razor, all
her bellicosity fled, and turned to the paralyzed ring
of spectators.
Bentley pocketed his gun, then the razor. “Take dat
gal on home,” he instructed Ike.
As the two departed meekly arm in arm, Bentley
offered himself as Callie's partner and was accepted.
“Strike up a tune, Jim-Ed!”
And the dancers once more swung onto the floor, the
recent incident wiped from their minds. For something
of the like happened at every dance.
[129]


Chapter Seventeen
nteen
VARRIE listened in ominous silence to the
story of her elder daughter.
"What did you say to her?" she interrupted.
But Blanche was so choked by sobs that she
1 couldn't answer.
“Oh, stop that cryin'!” Carrie commanded, sharply.
"You's too soft—that's what you is!"
“I told Mis' Laura I didn't care!" piped Martha.
Nothing seemed to blight Martha's spirit. She was made
of sterner stuff than her sister.
“Git me mah coat,” Carrie ordered Blanche.
Fifteen minutes later the Reverend Raymond was in-
terrupted in his Sabbath meditations by a knock at the
door. He stifled his surprise at the sight of Carrie, who
was the last person he would have expected to call. He
had heard much of this woman-a Magdalene, if re-
ports were true.
“Come right in, Sister Prince!" His invitation was
kindly, for kindliness was his fundamental trait. This
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to be on that program as anybody else's! Ah gives 'em
pennies to put in collection jes'same's the rest!"
The pastor stroked his side-burns thoughtfully dur-
ing Carrie's angry recital. When she was finally lost for
words and simply sat there glowering at him, he began
to talk in an even, soothing voice.
“I'm glad you came to me with this matter, Sister
Prince. I didn't know a thing about it. But you can be
sure that the girls will have parts. The superintendent,
Brother Winters, has often spoken of the aptness of
your daughters, and I'm quite sure this unpleasant thing
was no fault of his. I shall speak to Sisters Titman and
Curley at once. Your two girls shall have their pieces
tomorrow. Just tell them to stop past here on their way
from school, will you?" He paused. “And, by the way,
Sister Prince, could I extend to you an invitation to
come and worship with us some —
"Ah don't go to no church!" scowled Carrie.
“Oh ... I see,” still quietly. “But surely you will
come to hear your girls, won't you?" He fixed his calm
eyes on her until she lowered her own.
"Ah don't ’tend no church,” she reiterated, like a
sulky child.
When she was gone, the Reverend Raymond stood
at the door in puzzled thought, unmindful of the cold.
Had he seen tears in her eyes ...?
II
.
Her head held defiantly high, Carrie strode into the
little church that Sunday night before Christmas and
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"Amen! Amen!" could be heard emphatically from
all quarters of the church as the girl took her seat.
This was all that Carrie wanted. It was all she had
come for. She looked triumphantly at Etta Curley and
Laura Titman as they walked stiffly past, then she gath-
ered her daughters and went home.
This was the only time that Carrie Prince attended
the church at Herdford.
(134)


Chapter Eighteen
FALSE spring settled over the lowlands
after the holidays. Ice that had glazed the
surfaces of the Avondale and Town Creek,
broke and floated out towards the Chop-
tank. The bare three inches of Yuletide
snow thawed into a mixture of shell-and-dirt mud that
made the roads wellnigh impassable. It clung to the
felt-topped boots of the shuckers as they plowed to and
from the rival oyster-houses under the mild mid-after-
noon sun.
"Hey, Carrie!” Big Gussie stood in the road, balanc-
ing a quart jar precariously in her hand. Carrie poked
her head out of her kitchen window. “C'mon an' git
some free oysters down to de house. Ah jes' seed Ole-
man Gallion a-goin' up de street."
Carrie joined her presently with her own jar.
Gussie was full as a tick with gossip, and as they
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walked along she ladled it out. Carrie listened but said
nothing.
“What's you gonna do attah de shuckin' season's
over?” asked Gussie when she had drained herself dry
of other matters. "Season's over in April.”
Carrie thought a minute. “Ah don't know. One thing
certain. Ah ain't gonna pick no crabs. Guess Ah'll jes'
work 'long easy 'twell Ah gits mah house like Ah wants
it. You can't keep nothin' right wid a lot o' men
around!”
“Ain't it de truth!” agreed Gussie, and the conviction
in her voice would have done credit to an immaculate
housewife. Then she launched abruptly into a subject
to which she had clearly given considerable thought.
“ 'Course, 'tain't no 'fair o' mine, but why you let dat
Nellie gal take yo' man?"
Carrie stopped in surprise. “What man?”
"Why, Jake. Ain't he yo' man?"
Carrie laughed scornfully. "Huh! He ain't no man o'
minel Ah wouldn't have 'im. But Ah knows one thing
-efn he don't bring mo' money in fo' his board an'
keep, he ain't gonna stay in no house o' mine!"
"Wal, how-deel” ejaculated Gussie between gasps, for
the mud was tiring her. “Honey, you sho gots dis town
fooled!" In a minute when her breath was coming more
easily she added: "Dey says he was purty good wid de
cards an' dice 'twell dey cotched him cheatin' out to
Tom Bentley's last month. Nellie says he ain't won
none since. Guess he's scared, 'cause Tom told him he'd
blow his head off efn dey cotched 'im ag'in—an' Tom'll
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do dat, too! Dat black man sho don't fool wid you
none!"
"Somebody ought to blow his head off!” muttered
Carrie. “He ain't no good, he ain't! Nellie want 'im,
she sho kin have 'im, 'cause Ah don't!"
II
The low-raftered oyster-house was a smelly, sloppy
place that would have turned the stomach of the smart
people who relished Herdford oysters in the metropoli-
tan restaurants that were their final destination. Four
shelf-like, wooden structures, waist-high, ran the length
of the room-one on each side, two facing each other
down the center. Upon them were distributed heaps of
muddy oysters. The shuckers (there were women as well
as men) stood in narrow, body-width stalls that reached
to the top of the shelves.
A powerful fellow weaved continually up and down
the two aisles with a flat-bottomed barrow-bringing
fresh supplies of oysters for the shuckers, carrying off
shells that the shuckers had cast aside. The shuckers
were skilled laborers but this carrier, by comparison,
was a menial of the most inferior order. What he had
was strength for a strenuous job.
By the dim light struggling through muddy windows
Carrie made out the tall form of Grundy leaning indus-
triously over his shucking-board. At the moment he was
competing with his neighbor, a wiry little man with the
high cheek bones and swarthy coloring that indicated a
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fusion of Indian and Negro blood. Carrie left Gussie to
talk with Bud Saunders and eased over to Grundy's
side.
Grundy and the little man were evenly matched but
their methods of shucking differed. Grundy used the
orthodox oyster-knife, a slender, thin steel blade, about
the length and a quarter of the index finger, which he
gripped in his right hand. His gloved left hand held
the oyster on the board. First he would insert the knife,
guiding it with a muslin-stalled forefinger. Then after
a preliminary boring effected with his pliant right wrist
there would follow a coördinated twisting of oyster and
knife—and a juicy grey oyster lay unshelled, to be
flipped into one of two pails at the side of the pile.
The actual time of this operation was hardly more
than five seconds.
· His neighbor's methods required more archaic im-
plements a small hammer and a long-handled knife
(originally belonging to a table set) which had been filed
down until it resembled a hiltless stiletto. With the
hammer the little man broke the mouth of the oyster's
shell, temporarily jarring open the two halves. Then he
released the hammer with lightning rapidity, the knife
fairly leapt into his hand, and the blade darted like
the tongue of an aroused serpent between the two shells.
With the same twisting motion Grundy practiced he
exposed the oyster, and with the same flip he deposited
it in its pail.
The movements of the two men were flowing rather
than jerky—a symphony in muscular coördination-
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and Carrie looked on fascinated. The men were not un-
conscious of their audience.
Finally Grundy jabbed his quivering blade into the
soggy board at the base of his oyster pile and turned
to his opponent with a broad grin.
"Ah beat you dat time, Sam,” he rumbled, good-
naturedly.
Sam shrugged his shoulders and spat a stream of
tobacco juice onto the discarded shells at the side of
his stall, while he continued to ply his knife and
hammer.
Grundy swung his two pails down from the shelf,
disappeared into the packing-room, and returned.
Carrie was still there.
"You sho kin open dem oysters,” she smiled.
His gray eyes might have seen her for the first time,
but he flashed the whiteness of his teeth.
"Ain't you never seed no fast shuckin' befo'?” he
inquired.
"Ah ain't never seed no kind o' shuckin',” answered
Carrie.
“Whar you bin at?"
"Ah ain't lived near no water since Ah was a li'l' gal,"
she explained.
"You watch me an Ah'll show you how it's done,”
he promised. He took an oyster leisurely. “You see, oys-
ters ain't like humans—dey don't like to open dey
mouths ʼless'n dey jes' has to. Dat's why dey squeaks
an' spits when you sticks 'em wid yo' knife. You gots
to twist yo' knife like dis so's to make his jaws tired.
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See? Den you cuts de muscle off'n de bottom shell easy-
like so's you don't mess up his guts. See? Dar he is—a
big 'un. Want 'im?"
Carrie took it gingerly, but in a minute her expres-
sion of distaste disappeared and her face broke into its
most alluring smile.
"Will you shuck me this jar full fo' mah supper, Mr.
Grundy?” she asked.
“Sho! How'd you know mah name?"
"Oh, Ah larned that when Ah first come to town.
Don't you 'member out on the wharf, yonder, an'at
the oyster supper?”
Gray eyes met black eyes, smiled, and looked casually
away.
The cry of a baby wailed above the buzzing voices
and crackling shells. From the side of her husband,
felt-booted and mud daubed as was he, a stalwart
woman strode to a wooden box by the stove. Catching
the kicking infant to her breast, she sat down, croon-
ing softly. But the child's cries shrilled higher and
higher.
“Hey thar, Lew Grundy!" called the woman. “Sing
dat 'Go Down Moses' fo' dis chile; he's a man-chile efn
dey ever was one! He don't like no baby song!"
Coaxing cries came from all quarters:
"Yeah, Lew!"
“Come on, Deacon. We'll help you sing it!"
Without preliminaries, Grundy lifted his head and
poured forth the first line in a deeply mellow baritone.
He forgot the oysters, and his intensity transmitted it-
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self to Carrie. She found her own mature contralto
blending in the refrain. The other shuckers paused in
surprise at this duet. A low hum cautiously followed
the two leaders. Then, like the burst of an organ, all
blazed their voices to the rafters as they leapt into the
triumphantly hopeful chorus. Wailing minor chords
were woven instinctively into the simple melody until
a vibrant fullness blotted out the drab interior of the
smelly place of toil.
As the last note slipped away and labor was resumed,
Grundy beamed on Carrie.
"You sho kin sing, sister!” he exclaimed. His gray-
green eyes glowed. “Whyn't you jine de choir?"
Carrie's smile froze abruptly. “Much oblige' fo'
shuckin' mah oysters, Deacon Grundy!” She snatched
the jar and turned to go.
"Hold on!” There was majesty in the boom of his
voice. Carrie stopped.
"Wal?" she demanded, impatient at her weakness.
His eyes were wholly green now, and she could not
drop hers. His face was expressionless, and so low was
his tone it was audible only to Carrie.
"Ah didn't go to say nuffin' to rile you. So you didn't
have to be so snappish-like ... like some spiled young
un!”
Carrie whirled away with a toss of her head. His gaze
followed her weaving body until she passed through the
door. And his hands moved more slowly now.
[141]


Chapter Nineteen
ANS NEWMAN, one of the first residents
of Herdford and long since dead, had been
an enterprising young Dutchman. A good
provider, he had balked at having his fair
English wife walk a quarter of a mile for
household water to one of the town pumps on Front
Street. So at the back of his house on lower Tilton
Street he had dug a well, which was now the source
of water for the colored people of the neighborhood.
The present owner was gracious about the general use
of the well because it gave him a certain prestige. A
wooden framework, about the height of a small child's
head, built in a square about the mouth of the well,
served to prevent dogs, cats, chickens, and children from
falling in. But despite this precautionary structure, at
times one found the carcasses of careless animals float-
ing on the surface of the water fifteen feet below the
ground level. When such accidents occurred, use of the
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well was suspended until it was drained, or until the
villagers tired of going a greater distance for their water.
It was here that Laura Titman and Etta Curley met,
as if by prearrangement, the day following Carrie's visit
to the oyster-house.
Laura pulled her pail over the top of the well just
as Etta creaked around the corner of the Newman
house.
"Lawsy, chilel” exclaimed Laura, delightedly. “Ah
was jes' studyin' 'bout you!"
Etta adjusted her dust-cap with a reddened hand.
“Ah seed you from mah yard,” she explained. “Jes'
tryin' to finish up the Conklins' wash whilst the
weather's mild. Mah rheumaticks sho gits bad when Ah
has to hang out clothes in a cold wind. An' Ah knows
dis yere warm spell ain't going to last.”
Laura could hardly conceal her impatience as Etta
went on with her rambling recital apropos the state of
her health and the state of the weather.
"... jes' the way it does every year 'bout this time,”
Etta was droning on. “Sap ain' riz in the trees yit.”
Laura saw a brilliant opportunity and grabbed it.
“No-sap ain' riz in the trees,” she agreed, with a lift
of her eyebrows to indicate that she could tell more if
she were urged.
"What you mean?” Etta caught at Laura's sleeve in
her eagerness.
"You know, Etta, Ah ain' nobody to carry no tales
..." Laura hedged, tantalizingly.
"No indeedy! G'on honey."
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"... but from what Ah hears, Deacon Grundy done
went an’ fell fo’ that Carrie Prince woman!”
Etta was spellbound as Laura elaborated on a second-
hand account of the incident at the oyster-house. She
drank in the words like a thirsty hen at a puddle.
"You means to tell me," she finally exploded, "that
Deacon Grundy done fell fo' that hussy?" It was too
much for Etta. She leaned her ungainly length against
the house and raised despairing hands toward an en-
tirely disinterested sky. “An' him wid a wife an' fo'
chilluns 'cross the river!"
“It's a shame!"
"It sho is!"
II
Carrie swayed up the street toward the well, a bucket
in either hand. She was just in time to see Laura scurry-
ing off, with Etta shuffling at her heels.
“Buzzards!" she commented.
On her return she passed them at Laura's gate. The
next instant Grundy's tall figure swung around a bend
in the road.
"Good-afternoon, Mis' Prince,” he greeted her.
"Mought Ah help you wid yo’ buckets?”
Without waiting for her reply, he took both of the
pails and stood at her side, smiling. Anger and pleasure
fought for expression on her face. Then with a little
shrug, she fell into step with him.
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Carrie went into the parlor, and Grundy heard her
rustling some paper. She returned with a bottle of
whisky.
Carrie didn't know why she was acting in this strange
fashion. But this man with his green-gray eyes sent an
unaccountable glow all through her body.
“Git two glasses from the cupboard there," she
directed.
Grundy remained seated for a moment, studying her.
Then he did as he was told.
The cork popped. The liquor gurgled.
“To you,” Carrie said, lifting her glass.
“To you," repeated the man.
They drank.
Again the liquor gurgled.
“To us.”
“To us.”
They drank. Their eyes drew nearer. His arm reached
out.
III
"Cain't figger what's de matter wid Lew Grundy,"
Sam answered Bud Saunders.
“D-d-dad b-b-blame it!” spluttered the fat foreman.
“Ah c-cain't f-f-figger it mahself. Ain't never knowed
him t-t-to l-1-lay off 1-1-like he's a-doin' n-n-now. Every
d-d-day fo' a-a-a whole w-week!" He blinked disgustedly
at the pile of untouched oysters in front of Grundy's
stall.
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“Wal,” opined Sam as he deposited a huge wad of
tobacco on his mound of shells, “Ah ain't never seed
him mess wid no woman, but Ah'll bet a chew o’
tobaccy dey's a woman in dis!"
"What you mean-woman?” said Bud, incredulously,
forgetting to stammer.
"Ah ain't sayin' nuffin'," demurred Sam, and he
lapsed into his customary silence.
The object of Bud's concern was, at that very mo-
ment, quite oblivious to his defection. He was engrossed
in calculating the exact number of hairs that lay in
black disorder on Carrie's pillow. Her face smiled
serenely up into his. It was a changed face from that
with which she confronted the villagers—softer, with a
limpid film over the half-closed eyes.
They talked quietly, as if not to break the cocoon
of deep contentment that had spun itself about them.
And as they talked Carrie fingered curiously an ovular
object that was suspended from Lew's neck.
"What you doin' with this ole sack?” she asked, and
attempted to slip the brass chain over his head. But he
was too swift. He caught her hand and pulled it away.
"Ah ain't never s'posed to take dat off," he said,
somberly. “It's a charm.”
"Huh!” scoffed Carrie. "You believe in charms?” She
sniffed at it mockingly. "Smells like onions to me!"
He disregarded her unbelief. “You knows why Ah
wears dis?"
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“Don't tell me you bin fixed!” she exclaimed, still
mocking.
“Yeah, Ah has," replied Grundy. He waited patiently
for her derisive laughter to subside.
"You see mah eyes? Ever seed a black man wid eyes
like mine?” He thrust his lean face closer. “Look at 'em
good. What dey make you think 'bout? Cat's, eh?"
"Oh, Ah don't care what dey's like!” Carrie pulled
playfully at his small, well-set ears. She tried to take
her eyes from his, but as at the oyster supper, she could
not. Grundy chuckled a bit ruefully.
“You kin say what you wants to, honey, 'bout fixin'.
Ah sho wish dey warn't nuffin' in it mahself. But ever
since Ah was a young un Ah done had to believe in it,
'cause dat's jes' why mah eyes is like dey is.”
His seriousness stifled Carrie's laugh. “Tell me 'bout
it, honey,” she urged.
It all began with a quarrel between Grundy's mother,
Nettie, and Hannah, one of her best friends. The two
were young, unmarried belles of Belfort on the north-
ern shore of the Avondale, just opposite Herdford.
Among the newly freed slaves from points south,
there came Big Tom, a handsome octoroon. His huge
frame and melodious bass voice combined with his blue-
eyed moodiness to set the hearts of every girl aflutter,
but his fancy was initially attracted to Hannah, much
to Nettie's chagrin. However, at church service one
moon-ridden night, Nettie's nightingale voice, as she
sang at his side, evoked a response in Big Tom. So did
her willowy figure and doe-brown eyes.
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The baby, Lewis, named for his grandfather, proved
to be a healthy young animal—all reddish-brown, pre-
saging that rich, ebon coloring which was his in matur-
ity. But to the anguished fright of his mother, he
refused to open his eyes. This fact was remarked about
the village, and Hannah crowed in glee:
“Hee hee-Ah fix you!”
She looked for all the world like some famine-racked
raven rejoicing over a field of ungarnered grain.
When the child's eyes finally did open, Nettie shrank
in horror. The pupils buried in that round, chubby
face were green-gray, like a cat's!
In desperation, lest the curse of the gallows also be
fulfilled, Nettie stole secretly to the hut of Black Isaac,
renowned as a conjurer. Beneath the hanging herbs and
other mystical impedimenta swinging from the ceiling.
Nettie told her story. Isaac—wrinkled, dried-up, tooth-
less—rocked to and fro in his cross-legged position on
the floor. Then when Nettie had concluded he gave a
cackle and suggested a bargain. His terms were exor-
bitant, but the terrified girl agreed eagerly.
After some weird incantations, he produced a small
sack and thrust it upon Nettie. "You gots to chain dis
to he neck—don't never 'low he to take it off long's he
live," he instructed. “Ah cain't change he eyes, but Ah
kin stop de hangin'. Make he jine church soon's he kin
talk. Make he pray ever' day. ..."
"An' ever since Ah kin 'member,” concluded Grundy,
“Ah ain't missed a Sunday in church. An' Ah ain't never
fo'got to wear dis yere bag. An' Ah prays ever' day-
anyways, up to last week.”
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These Low Grounds
“How come you don't pray now?" flared Carrie, an-
grily. She moved away from him, her brow puckering.
"You thinks Ah ain't good, don't you. So you cain't
pray no mo'.”
Grundy's head sank moodily to his chest. Carrie
clutched him by both of his hulking shoulders and
shook his face upright.
“Ah knows you gots a wife an' chilluns 'cross to Bel.
fort,” she said, with less heat, for his dejection caused
tenderness to creep back into her voice. “But didn't you
tell me as how yo'wife is allus sickly-like? You gives
her yo' money an' goes to see her, don't you? You don't
treat her mean, nuthah. You thinks it's a sin fo' us to
be together when it's like that?” She embraced him
hungrily. Not even Jim Prince had awakened the in-
tense feeling she had for Grundy, a feeling that burned
and was never quenched. Her spirit passed quickly to
him, and he pressed his face to her bosom. Another
impulse prompted her:
"Pray, Lewis-pray now," she whispered.
Grundy lay silent until once more light fingers traced
a pattern of warmth upon his face and neck. And then,
more softly than he had ever prayed before, a prose-
poem flowed from his impassioned lips.
In the middle of a dolefully rhythmical line Grundy
broke off with a dry sob.
"Ah cain't keep it up!” he cried, and he swept Carrie
violently to him. “An’ Ah don't care, nuthah!” he whis-
pered hotly into her ear.
Carrie smiled, and silence, unbroken, descended. ...
[151]


Chapter Twenty
HE oyster season flagged toward the end of
March, and died during April. The tran-
sient oyster-shuckers and their families com-
menced their trek homeward and the col-
ored census of the town returned to normal.
May saw the exodus of Herdfordites to the centers of
strawberry-picking. Strange white men, farmers, came
to town and selected their foremen, who in turn can-
vassed the colored residents for workers in the berry-
patches of Queen Anne, Caroline, Somerset, and Wico-
mico counties. Whole families would leave, reducing
the population to subnormal until their return in June,
a few days before the Independence Day celebration.
With school closed, Martha and Blanche were home
during the day, so Grundy and Carrie could not meet
in the afternoon. Nights, Jake was a hindrance to their
trysts, for most of the men who gambled had left town
and Nellie had emigrated to fresher fields, so Jake spent
a great deal of time at the house.
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Balked on all sides, Carrie and Grundy met in secret
—so they thought-at the cove where Grundy was mak-
ing ready his boat for the crab season. After supper,
when the girls were in bed and Jake had perched him-
self on the front porch with his feet on the railing,
Carrie would slip noiselessly out of the back door and
down a winding path to the cove's calm pocket of water.
These hours beneath a soft moon or starred sky, with
water lapping the sides of the boat, brought Carrie and
Grundy together in silence as often as in passion. Some-
times they talked, and their talk ranged widely among
things they understood and other things that perplexed
them mightily. Grundy's conscience, raised on the strict
fare of orthodoxy, was a great burden to him.
“Do you think we's wrong?” he blurted out on one
occasion.
“What you mean?” parried Carrie.
“Wal,” said the man, uncertainly, "you see—both us
is married-an' got chilluns. Ain't dat what de Good
Book call a sin—us yere together-jes' same's man an'
wife?"
"No! No! 'Tain't no sin!” protested the woman.
“Ain't nuthah one o' us wrong!” And she went on plead-
ingly: "You cain't stop now, honey, 'cause Ah cain't
live yere with everybody 'gainst me an’spitin' me 'lessn
you's yerel You make it easy. Ah don't care what they
says 'long's Ah has you."
The feel of this woman at his side was enough to shut
out everything from the man's consciousness: the codes
that were the heritage of his people, other codes that
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These Low Grounds
had been instilled in them by their masters in bondage
and by a religion imposed upon them for more than
two centuries. Grundy turned to Carrie without a word
and from that time the subject of their sin was avoided
as if by mutual agreement.
Then one hot and humid June night Jake eliminated
himself as a hindrance to these two.
Denied by Carrie, without the solace of Nellie, and
with no gambling to employ his mind, time burdened
Jake to distraction. On this night he rummaged about
the house until he found Carrie's cache of liquor, and
within a short time he succeeded in dulling the edge of
his boredom.
Down at the river, Grundy turned an experienced
eye to the clouds shadowing the moon.
“Look like we's gwine to have a blow," he stated.
"Reckon Ah'd better put out fo' home.”
"You better wait 'twell it blows over,” said Carrie,
anxiously. “You mought meet it halfway 'cross."
"Sho-but Ah gots ileskins," answered Grundy. He
began to erect his mast.
"No! Wait!” cried Carrie, a shade of fright in her
voice. “You kin come up to the house. Cain't nobody
say nothin' 'bout that." She jumped ashore and pulled
him after her.
It was one of those electrical tempests that come sud-
denly out of nowhere. When they were halfway to the
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These Low Grounds
house, the heavens broke into ominous rumblings and
jagged streaks of lightning cut across the thirsty land-
scape. They rushed up to the back porch. And just then
a terror-filled scream pierced a clap of thunder.
“It's Blanche!" Carrie flew to the door. But Grundy
was swifter. With one bound he was through the kitchen
and into the parlor.
Almost instantly he reappeared, dragging the
drunken, cursing Jake by the collar. Grundy's eyes were
emerald flames, his face a frozen mask of fury. Carrie
had one shuddering glimpse of him as she hurried into
the parlor.
She found Blanche sobbing hysterically.
“Blanche-is you hurt?" Carrie framed the wet face
in her hands. “What did he do?”
"He called me downstairs, Mamma—said he wanted
me to make him s-some s-sandwiches,” sobbed Blanche.
“What did he do?” repeated Carrie.
“Then he grabbed me sudden-like an' commenced to
kissin' me. An’ I hollered an' scratched, an' bit him-
an' then you-all come.”
"Is that all?"
"Yes'm,” Blanche assured her.
Grundy's light tread halted beside them.
“Ah drove him 'way,” he said, quietly.
Carrie looked in relief at his face. The eyes were gray
now.
After Carrie had put Blanche back to bed she re-
joined Grundy in the kitchen where he sat drumming
the table with his finger-tips.
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“Ah started to kill 'im,” he stated, without emotion.
“But Ah reckoned you didn't want no trouble." He
looked at his big, right fist from which the skin had been
knocked at the knuckles. “Reckon you need a man
boarder fo' de summer?” he asked.
"You means yo’self? What'll they say?"
“You mean you don't want me?"
“No, but ..."
“Den Ah don't care what dey says!" he stated, flatly,
and covered her mouth with his to stop further protest.
III
Beneath its dusty white sheet of heat Herdford
drowsed through the summer months. But it was not
too drowsy to whisper. And the subject of most of its
whisperings concerned Grundy and his altered position.
Why, asked the town, did he take up residence with
that Carrie Prince woman? Why had he stopped attend-
ing church? Why was he seen so seldom? And why had
Jake Tillery disappeared?
Then the town knew, for Etta and Laura were dili-
gent. And the town whispered no more, but talked and
nodded its head.
By the time autumn had burnished the flat landscape,
and the shuckers had made their yearly pilgrimage to
the town, the talk had drifted across to Belfort. And
it came to the ears of Lettie, Grundy's wife. And she
accused him when he went to see her. And they quar-
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reled. And he left her in tears, swearing never to see
her again.
IV
Then Crazy Hiram came back to town.
No one knew what had occurred to rob Hiram of
his wits, though there were many conjectures. It was
only known that he had left the village to try his for-
tune in Philadelphia two years before Carrie Prince
came to Herdford. At that time, he was a gay, stockily
built young buck, with a sloping breadth of shoulder
and a bullish neck. At work, wheeling smelly barrows
of oyster shells to waiting scow-boats, or at leisure, there
was always a smile on his jolly face and a song on his
lips. For Hiram had a gift of music. He could enliven
winter evenings in Ike Thomas's pool-room with his
voluntary renditions of popular ballads or old spirit-
uals; and no moon-light excursion up the Chesapeake
was complete unless Hiram was there with his smile,
his guitar, and his colorful tenor voice.
Now, at the time of the Grundy-Carrie Prince affair,
Hiram returned to town, clad in the tattered remnant
of a once boisterous checkered suit. No one recognized
him at first. It was impossible. His powerful frame had
shrunk to the proportions of a sickly stripling. His eyes,
that had been so full of zest, stared bloodshot out of
the shadow cast by his filthy hat. His lips twisted in a
spasmodic grimace, revealing stained fangs of teeth.
When he appeared without warning at the pool-room
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These Low Grounds
that September night, a hush fell upon the place, still-
ing the good-natured banter. He said not a word, but
stood for a moment blinking from one to the other.
Then he shambled into the back room, to emerge with
the guitar that had been stored there during his ab-
sence. Hunching himself on an up-ended box, he tuned
the instrument, all the while muttering to himself and
shaking his head waggishly. Then he played.
At first it was a wild discordant confusion of sound,
as if the instrument were complaining of its being
rudely awakened after a long rest. But the familiar
touch soothed it, for gradually out of its wide belly
lazed a rhythmical low-down blues accompaniment to
the hum of the ghoulish creature on the box. It was
mournful; it tingled up the spine in waves; it brought
out goose pimples on flesh that a moment before had
been smooth and warm. The men, mesmerized, stayed
until Hiram stopped abruptly and shuffled out into the
dark. Then they slunk home in pairs.
Carrie came upon Hiram one day when he was being
pestered by a band of barefoot boys who fled at her
coming. The incident established her as his protector,
and on other occasions she had an opportunity to be-
friend him, for he had no relatives. He proved to be
quite harmless. Though he refused to sleep in the
house (nobody ever discovered where he slept), he ac-
cepted the food Carrie gave him. And in return he
would run errands for her and bring wash-water from
the well on Mondays. At times he was annoying. Often
he would follow her, like a musical fool of an ancient
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These Low Grounds
court, strumming his guitar, and measuring the beat to
her footfall.
This befriending of the miserable Hiram was not
interpreted as a charitable act by the villagers. Super-
stitious to an amazing degree, they saw in Carrie's asso-
ciation with one "strick by de Lawd fo' his evil doin's"
witchcraft pure and simple. It was something else for
Carrie to live down.
[159]


Chapter Twenty-one
HEY said in Shrewsbury that Jim Prince
was trying to work himself to death, now
that he had no son, nor daughter, nor wife
to drive to that fate. As a matter of fact,
Prince worked to forget. For he was plagued
by the realization that he had lost something which he
had not wanted to lose. The night of Carrie's departure
he had gone to Amy for solace; but her eager wiles fell
upon an unresponsive mood. He had cursed her and
left, never to return.
To deaden the longings that attacked him, like in-
sects that pester a haltered horse, he worked as he had
worked in the years before his prosperity. He left the
store entirely in the hands of the clerk, and went out
to his farm. There, throughout the long fall and winter,
he labored at the old tasks—harvesting what the greedy
sun had left, stable-cleaning, manure-spreading, fence-
mending, hog-killing. In the spring he led the hands
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These Low Grounds
at the plowing, harrowing, and planting. From dawn to
sunset he toiled mercilessly, until the hands protested
and he told them that they were not obliged to keep
pace with him. Physical tire brought swift sleep, but
his dreams were not resting. He grew more lean of body
and gaunt of face, until he reminded one of the Jim
Prince whom Carrie had known in his youth, except for
patches of gray at his temples and that single streak of
white up the center of his small head.
Jim Prince straightened from the open hill of pota-
toes over which he had been bending. He pushed back
the ragged straw hat from his sweating face and squinted
sharply at the man who had addressed him.
“Who be you, stranger?”
It was Jake, but he depended upon the lapse of years
to save him from recognition. For two months and
more he had wandered from town to town, waiting for
the deep gash above his left eye, a product of Grundy's
slashing fist, to heal. Now he made himself as affable
as possible. This man Prince was a vital cog in his
scheme of revenge a revenge born of a hate that be-
came more poisonous with the rising and setting of each
day's sun.
“Ah’m from up to Herdford way, suh-up near East-
land,” began Jake, adopting the twangy drawl of the
Shoreman. “An'as Ah was a-comin' dis way on busi-
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ness, yo' sister what lives to Herdford told me to stop
by ap' give 'mongst-you her regards.”
"Mah sister?” puzzled Prince.
“Sho-ain't she yo’ sister?" asked Jake, innocently.
“You know—she got two gals -
"What kind o' lookin' woman is she?" Jim Prince
gripped Jake's arm until that one winced.
“She say you mought'n' know her, 'cause you ain't
seed her since 'mongst-you was chilluns."
"Tell me what she look like, man!" Prince was fierce
in his eagerness.
"She's tall, wid long black hair like a Injun's,
an' "
"How ole de gals?" interrupted Prince.
“Oh, one 'bout fo'teen or fifteen, an' de li'l' one she
'bout six, Ah reckon."
Joy broke in a torrent over Prince. "Yass!" he cried,
“dat's mah sister, an' Ah'm sho glad you stopped by.
Come on up to de house an' have a glass o' wine—it's
cold."
"Nope-thanks,” said Jake, hastily. “Ah gots to be
on mah way. Ah hopes you comes to Herdford some-
time. Ah knows yo' sister would be glad to see 'mongst-
you." He was all the while backing away from Prince.
“Ah'm on mah way over to Deerfield so's Ah kin git de
first boat out fo' Balt’more tonight.”
With that he set out over the field for the road.
Prince watched him until he disappeared behind a
clump of woods. Where had he seen that face before?
It had looked strangely familiar.
Then the thought of seeing Carrie again dismissed
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Jake from his mind. So she had taken this means of
letting him know that she wanted to see him—that she
wanted him to bring her homel She must be ready to
forget. In his height of feeling, Prince hallooed to one
of his hands working in an adjoining field:
"Come on up to de house—we gwine quit fo' de day!"
This was so unprecedented that the announcement
had to be repeated. But soon all hands were making
eagerly for the cool sanctuary of the farmhouse, be-
cause the sun was exceedingly hot. There, they were
surprised again. Jim Prince brought out two gallons of
wine from the woodshed and told them to drink their
fill.
“Lawsy!” was the only comment they could make, so
great was their astonishment.
An hour later, washed and shaved, Prince left the
care of the farm to Big George and hurried northwards
behind the fleetest pair of horses the livery-stable
boasted. The steeds felt the lash more than once, for
Jim Prince was jubilant. Here he had made numerous
trips to Baltimore in search of his woman, and she was
right on the Sho' all the time! But that was the way it
went. Always look in the least likely place for some-
thing lost.
And on the boat that night, Jake Tillery turned his
face to the east and grinned.
III
“Carrie!”
Carrie jerked upright from the oven, startled by that
lilting, caressing drawl. There was no mistaking the
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voice. She had known it for eighteen years. Without
turning from the stove, she answered him huskily:
“Jim Prince ..." The words fell flatly on the ear
like an object without resilience.
Prince's head sagged, and his partially extended arms
dropped to his sides. The muscles at his jaws hunched
into hard ridges, then slowly relaxed. Jim Prince had
learned to keep himself well in hand. Quietly he moved
over to his wife and placed gentle hands on her shoul-
ders, but at the touch the shoulders drew shrinkingly
upward. The hands were withdrawn.
"Don't you want to see me, honey?" he asked.
Carrie swung swiftly about and faced him. And sym-
pathy stirred in her at the signs of care and toil which
marked him. Except for the change of sudden ageing,
here was the Jim Prince who had come to her rescue
at A'nt Sue's, who had taken her away to a home of
her own. Her eyes lost some of their cloudy blackness.
Her face softened perceptibly.
“Whar's de chilluns?” asked Prince.
At this question Carrie's expression froze again.
“What you want to know fo'?" she retaliated. “They
ain't yo's, is they?"
The thrust hurt. Prince looked away, out of the
window, where the dust-white road sweltered in the
afternoon sun.
"Cain't you fo’git dat, honey? Ah knows now Ah was
wrong ..." He paused hopefully, but this strange
woman would not help him out. She just looked at him,
her black eyes cold, cold. “Cain't you see Ah wants mah
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chilluns? Cain't you see Ah needs you?" And he ended
his plea as erring males have ended similar pleas since
time began: “You knows Ah loves you, Carrie. Ah ain't
never loved nobody else."
Carrie's derisive smile held incredulity and failed to
dispel the bleakness from her face.
"You wants yo'chilluns!” she mocked. “Fo'what? To
work 'em to death like you done Jim?"
Prince backed away before her rising voice, but
Carrie followed him.
"You loves mel” She laughed harshly. “You didn't
love me when you had me, did you?”
“Honey -
"See that?” She held up a piece of dough.
"See that?" she repeated. “Wal, Ah was jes' like that
when Ah was wid you. You could o' done anything wid
me you wanted to. But Ah ain't like that no mo'l Now
you git out'n mah house, 'cause "
Martha romped onto the porch and through the door,
then stopped short when she saw her father. But
Blanche, who followed her, ran to him and threw her
arms tightly about him.
Since the night that Jake had molested her, a rest-
less dissatisfaction had possessed Blanche. At the supper
table, she would sit in moody silence, speaking curtly
only when she was spoken to. Any slight criticism
brought on a flood of tears which no amount of scold-
ing or coaxing could stem. And there were times when
Carrie thought she detected bitter accusation in the
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girl's face as her look swung from her mother to
Grundy.
Her eyes were moist now as Prince held her at arm's-
length, a happy little smile brightening his face.
"You glad to see yo’ pappy, ain't you, chile?”
Blanche nodded, but in a second she returned to his
arms and burst into one of her sudden spells of crying.
Prince turned to Carrie. “Let me take her home wid
me?"
"Oh, papa, please! Please take me! Please!” Blanche
begged.
"Blanche!" ejaculated Carrie, and she advanced on
the two.
But defiance had pulled Prince to his full height and
he looked unflinchingly into Carrie's stormy face.
"Ah'm gonna take her! Ah wouldn't want her efn she
didn't want to come—but you can't stop me now!
Come on, Blanche.”
It was defeat, and Carrie knew it. As father and
daughter started toward the door, she stopped them.
“Blanche, go git yo' clothes."
"Dat's all right,” interposed Prince, "we gwine git a
whole new outfit on de way home in Eastland. 'Tain't
too late fo' her to git to de Institute, an' Ah calc'lated
she mought need some new clothes befo' she goes."
"Institute!”
"Sho, an' you kin take up anything you wants." He
stopped beside Carrie, who had sunk wearily into a
chair.
"Ah don't know how you bin livin' yere," he said,
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“He come fo’ you!" the man kept repeating. "He
come fo' you!"
"You's hurtin' me, Lew!"
The light faded from his eyes and he pressed his lips
to her neck.
“Ah didn't mean to, honey,” he whispered, brokenly.
“Ah wouldn't hurt you fo' nuffin' in de world! Ah jes'
ain't mahself, dat's all."
Because she couldn't help herself, she caressed him
soothingly, but the fear lingered.
"You wouldn't leave me, would you, honey?" he
asked. It was a mixture of command, question, and
plea. And her reassurance, punctuated with kisses, was
suspended somewhere between sincerity and diplomatic
acquiescence.
It was the beginning of a rift.
[168]


Chapter Twenty-two
NCE more autumn brought its chill winds
and rains to Herdford. Once more the vil-
lage's colored population was swollen by
the incoming shuckers. It was a prosper-
ous year for Messrs. Gallion and Kirkland,
and their prosperity inevitably meant prosperity for
Carrie and Big Gussie. Every available space in the Red
Brick House was occupied: Carrie even put cots in the
parlor. And across the street Gussie's girls were more
desirable than ever.
However, Carrie's chief pleasure was not derived
from the increased business, but from Blanche's enthu-
siastic letters from the Institute. She read them over
and over, then spent long afternoons composing her
replies, to be accompanied by crisp new dollar bills.
“I am going home to see Papa for Thanksgiving and
Christmas,” Blanche wrote in November. And for the
first time, Carrie wished she were back in Shrewsbury.
As Thanksgiving approached, the longing grew and
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showed itself in her preoccupied manner. Nothing in-
terested her-not even the Good Brothers' dance at
which the Bainbridge band would play. At night she
lay unresponsive in Grundy's arms until he couldn't
fail to notice her detachment.
Only one answer presented itself to her lover, and
he became jealous. The jealousy swelled to blind pro-
portions, so that a compliment or a casual admiring
glance bent in Carrie's direction while her boarders sat
at meals around the kitchen table would enflame him
beyond reason. Alone with Carrie, he would air his
grievances, but with little satisfaction to himself. He
succeeded only in wearing her patience to a shred.
Then when she tried to meet the situation by ignoring
his inquisitorial complaints, Grundy was infuriated the
more.
Affairs were at this pass when the good Reverend
Raymond bethought himself to hold a revival and
purge the town of its sins. Was not the year of the cen-
tury's birth a gloriously appointed time for the salvag-
ing of human souls? To that end he imported the
Right Reverend Elijah Isaiah Brown, an itinerant evan-
gelist, and he selected Carrie and Grundy as two of the
more prominent sinners to be reclaimed from hell fire.
The elders of the village remember as if it were yes-
terday the events of that evangelical harvest at Winters
M. E. Church. Old Cap'n Tom Winters, eighty years
old now; Etta Curley, angular as futuristic sculpture;
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leaving an eight-inch fall of snow and sleet—"a dia-
mond-studded cloak of purity," the Reverend E. I.
Brown called it that night in his sermon.
Singly, and in pairs, and in groups, they came to the
meeting.
Farmer Bailey's sleek blacks pranced into the church-
yard as if they were going to a fair. Two mules jogging
cautiously down the slope of Market Street drew be-
hind them a slithering, tinkling sleigh which brought
the Johnson family, muffled to the ears in woolen
scarves and great-coats. Up the parallel wagon tracks of
Shell Street the felt boots and heavy shoes of the towns-
people trampled the snow and ice—the whited marsh
on one side and the field of icicled brush on the other,
both deserts of moon-lit pallor.
So they came, some to renew their spiritual strength,
some to find salvation which had hitherto eluded them.
In the company filing up the shelled road was Hen'y
Hooper, the ne'er-do-well. At each step he took, a moan
escaped his great chest: "Save me, mah Lawd! Save me,
mah Lawd!” Over and over again he repeated it. For
two days and nights now, Hen'y had been wrestling
with his devil. For two days and nights he had been
pleading with the Lord. Clearly, Hen'y hungered and
thirsted after righteousness. ...
Inside the church a resonant hum rode the heated
atmosphere, and above the hum was heard a voice half
chanting, half singing. At intervals the whole congre-
gation, swaying on the hard benches like rows of me-
chanical dolls, joined in the refrain:
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the mourners' bench. And now Cap'n Ham made a
move that went down in the community's unforgotten
annals. He rose, pushed his way through the perspiring,
hysterical circle, slouched down the aisle and out of the
church. There was an instant's silence, for the like had
never happened before. Laura Titman wailed, but the
sound only served to speed the erring one on his way.
Then under the magnetism of the Reverend Brown's
voice, the flock resumed the strenuous work of induct-
ing the proclaimed sinners into the fold.
About an hour later, they were rewarded when Hen'y
Hooper's eyes glazed like those of one in a trance, and
he toppled off the bench. It is said that he frothed at
the mouth. But applications of snow to his temples
restored him, and in a minute he leaped crazily to his
feet, to rage about the aisles like one possessed.
"Ah’m saved! Praise de Lawd!” he bellowed in his
thunderous voice. “Ah’m saved!”
At the height of his frenzy his great strength redou-
bled itself, and the bear-like embraces he bestowed
upon the brothers and sisters terrified those earnest in-
struments of God. It was cause for relief when he was
finally quieted.
Encouraged by Hooper's conversion, the crowd fo-
cused its attention on Bentley, who must have taken
spark from his seat-mate. He also rose, not in passion,
but like the cool gamester he was, and lifted a hand for
silence.
“Brothers and sisters,” he addressed them, "jes' let
me go home to fight dis battle wid mahself. Efn Ah'm
a-comin' through, Ah wants to come through right!"
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Approving Amens greeted this.
“Ah’m gwine home now an' clean mah house —Ah
wants to git dat straight first. Den Ah'm a-comin' back
yere tomorrow night an' git mah soul clean!" With
that he swung down the aisle and into the cold night.
The following night, true to his word, he came-but
not as expected. Into the hot, steaming church he
stalked, brandishing triumphantly a broken table leg.
"Ah don't need no singin', brethren an' sisters!" he
shouted, whirling about like a dervish in order to face
his wide-eyed hearers on all sides. “Ah done bin re-
deemed! See dat?" He shook the table leg. “Do you
see dat, brothers? Do you see dat, sisters?" He was
chanting now. "Wal-wall Wal-wal—wall Dat's what
Ah done to all, brothers to all, sisters to all mah
gamblin' tables. Oh, yassi Mah soul is clean! Hallelu-
jah! Ah met de sperit-met de sperit out dar-out dar
in de snow! Oh, yass! Praise de Lawd!"
When he had raved at some length in this manner,
he collapsed suddenly on a bench, a disheveled sodden
heap, panting painfully. Tom Bentley had lost his wager
to Cap'n Ham.
Through the space between a slightly raised window
and its sill, Grundy's gray eyes peered hauntedly at the
scene. Something within him strove to respond to the
familiar stimulus. But to no purpose. The spirit was
dead that would have answered. Grundy turned from
the window with bowed head.
[175]


Chapter Twenty-three
’NT EMMA WIGGINS was protesting, in that
level voice of hers, against the crop of
births expected just before Christmas that
year. They were in Feuchtman's general
merchandise store opposite Newman's yard
-A'nt Emma, Gussie, and the stout, florid proprietor.
"Ain't seed so many young uns a-comin' since Ah
bin helpin' to bring 'em yere," complained A’nt Emma.
"Vell, who's turned fool now?" questioned the grocer
tersely as he puttered about filling Gussie's order.
"Shame on you fo' yo'talk!” retorted A’nt Emma,
tossing her shawl. “It's de Lawd's doin's an' you ought'n'
to talk like dat!”
"Humph! The Lord's doin's!"
“How many comin', Mis' Emmy?" inquired Gussie.
She leaned heavily against the counter, still panting
from her walk through the snow.
"Wal, dey's fo' altogedder,” answered A’nt Emma,
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Cap'n Tom ain't got to know nuffin' 'bout it 'twell he
come home-an' den de baby'll be yere."
"Wal, Ah don't know,” said A’nt Emma. “Ah'll see
Julie, anyways."
So it happened that Carrie Prince became midwife
to Julie Winters. For Julie, long since tired of carry-
ing this eighth child of hers, had turned a weary face
to A'nt Emma's questions, saying that it was of no con-
sequence by whose hand the child was delivered.
Carrie in her pride was at first resolved to be coolly
distant toward Cap'n Tom's wife, but her resolve
melted before the welcoming smile of the frail woman.
“Ah reckon you'll find the place in a kind o’ bad
way, Mis' Prince," apologized Julie. “Ella does the best
she kin, but you cain't 'spect too much from a ten-year-
old."
Ella, Julie's oldest daughter twisted her spindly legs
in embarrassment until Carrie reached out to pat her
kindly. “That's all right, honey," she said to the girl,
"We'll set things to rights."
They did. Within a few days the house had under-
gone a thorough cleaning, and Ella's shyness had given
way to friendliness.
Two days before Christmas the baby was born, a girl.
Then, relieved of her burden, Julie grew more com-
municative. During the days of her convalescence, she
and Carrie held long conversations that gradually in-
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. "Ah mé Carrie,”
creased in intimacy. Before this woman's sincerity Car-
rie's bulwark of aloof pride, built up against the town's
accusing eyes, slowly crumbled.
"Is it so that you an' Deacon Grundy is livin' to-
gether?" asked Julie one day.
“ 'Spose we is?" demanded Carrie, defensively. “He
ain't got no wife now.”
“Ah know—but ain't yo' husband livin'?"
In reply Carrie told Julie the whole story.
“But you still gots a husband, Carrie,” Julie insisted
when she had finished. “Ah married a man, too, an'
Tom ain't no better'n yo' Jim. Ah knows even ef him
an' Etta don't know Ah knows." She lifted a hand to
stop the remonstrance on Carrie's lips. “Ah knows an-
other thing, too_jes' 'cause a man runs wid a woman
don't mean he loves her! 'Sides, look what you doin'
to Deacon Grundy. He ain't bin to church in months.
You done help him go 'stray, Carrie. Oh, Ah knows it
warn't all yo' fault, but jes' the same, 'tain't too late
to do the right thing. Den you gots to think 'bout yo'
chilluns."
“But Lew is ter'ble jealous, Julie,” said Carrie. “He
told me he cain't do without me now. He says Ah'm
all he's got left-an' he's all Ah got too, now.”
“Well . . . you suit yo'self, honey,” said Julie.
20 better
III
A letter from Blanche in the night mail added fur-
ther weight to Julie's persuasive talk. It was postmarked
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“Shrewsbury” and the childishly scrawled first para-
graph read:
Dear mama,
I am home with Papa for Christmas and New
Year's. I wish you and Martha were home with me
and Papa. It is so long since we saw you all and we
miss you very much. Papa says he wish you would
come home just for a day anyway. I would like to
see you before I go back to school. I will be here
until the ice breaks in the Bay. ...
Carrie's chin quivered ever so slightly as she refolded
the letter and placed it in her bosom.
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her mouth. Grundy stared silently as the liquid warmth
poured down her throat. The rise and fall of her larynx
seemed to fascinate him. When she had finished finally,
she staggered back, and an insane laugh tore from her
lips. Then she stopped abruptly and swayed toward
him, a loose lock of her hair falling across her face.
"You cain't stop me! Ah'm goin'. Ah was comin'
back-but now Ah ain't! You think Ah'm scared o'
you? Wal, Ah was—but Ah ain't no mo'l You don't
care nothin' 'bout me-nothin'!” She broke into that
crazy laugh again. "See this bottle? Ah'm a-goin' over
to Gussie's an git Marty. An' whilst Ah'm there Ah'm
a-goin' to spread joy. 'Cause this is mah last day in this
yere town!” She staggered to the door, where she
turned, supporting herself drunkenly. “An' with you!"
she finished. Her lips writhed about the words. Her
face was coarse, ugly.
Grundy sat woodenly, listening to her irregular foot-
falls on the frozen ground. The retreating sounds fell
like lessening blows of a trip-hammer upon his ears.
And long after they had ceased, the blood at his tem-
ples continued to throb to a measured beat, until a
blind impulse sent him careening out of the hot
kitchen. Hatless, and with only a ragged, mud-specked
sweater between himself and the cold, he struck out
aimlessly.
In a few minutes he was at the cove where his boat
lay in its frozen fastness. Several skaters were sitting on
it, resting themselves. By this time Grundy's swift walk
had combined with the liquor to generate an undue
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amount of warmth. He jerked at the top button of his
sweater to loosen it, with a gesture so violent that the
button flew off, and following the downward swing of
his arm another object struck the ice, then slithered
onto a tuft of marsh-grass bordering the shore.
"Hi thar, Deacon!" one of the skaters greeted him as
he slid up to the boat. “Thought 'mongst-you warn't
a-comin' out dis year, sartin.”
Grundy nodded absently, his eyes fixed on Morris'
shore, now a barren expanse smudging the eastern
horizon.
"Yere," the man offered. He shook off his skates and
handed them to Grundy. “Take mah skates. Ah'm hon-
gry as a bear! Bin out since mornin' an' ain't et no
dinner yit. You kin keep 'em 'twell tomorrow.” And
he made for the shore, beating his gloved hands against
his sides to warm them.
"C'mon, Deacon,” urged another, performing a fancy
turn, “Ain't set mahself ag'in you since last year."
“Shosho," was Grundy's toneless answer, as he me-
chanically strapped on the skates.
He was graceful in action. His body slanting at just
the correct angle, his long legs cut with rhythmical ease
over the shiny surface of the ice. The liquor he had
drunk, instead of destroying his sense of balance, added
a daring abandonment to his movements. He was a
skimming, swooping figure of precision. While the
other skaters formed an admiring gallery, he went
through his repertoire of grape-vines and figure-eights,
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finishing his exhibition by streaking a clear piece of
ice with the Spencerian capitals of his name.
He might have been alone, for he gave no indication
that he heard the applause which greeted him. In a
moment he broke through the ring of spectators and
coasted to his boat where he took off the skates. Then
with them swinging from their straps, he strode off the
ice, his great lithe form outlined against the sky, like
the trunk of a solitary, branchless pine.
III
.
Crazy Hiram perched at Gussie's side that afternoon
and strummed an accompaniment to Carrie's singing.
The light of the sun through dirty windowpanes fell
on his grimacing face and brought out the festered pock
marks which gave to the skin the appearance of a frog's
back. He looked like a horrid gnome, and he played un-
holy music.
They were in Gussie's parlor. The room was stagnant
with the reek of raw whisky and sweating flesh. An
obese queen of carnality, Gussie sat surveying her court,
her body grooved like a bulging sack against the rounds
bracing the bottom and arms of her rocker. And as
Carrie sang one after another the songs she had sung
years before at Sue's, Martha leaned bright-eyed on the
arm of Gussie's chair, as much at ease as another child
would have been with mud pies. To her the loose-
lipped faces and drink-sodden bodies about her-loung-
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ing in chairs, sprawled on the floor against the wall
were familiar and right.
“Let de li'l'un dance," suggested one of Gussie's
women, a doll-like creature who was curled, like a
sleepy kitten, in the adequate lap of Bud Saunders.
"Sh-sh-sho, C-C-Carrie,” Bud struggled to add, “l-l-let
'er c-c-cakewalk!"
“G'on, honey,” bade Carrie. “Mought's well give 'em
yo' last dance befo' we leaves from yere."
Then just as Martha's eager little legs were about to
swing into the first steps, there was a loud, insistent
racket at the kitchen door.
“Let 'em in, Carrie,” Gussie directed.
Carrie lurched into the littered kitchen, flung wide
the door, and swayed against it. There stood Grundy,
big, green-eyed, silent. The veins in his neck and tem-
ples were like strands of pulsing rope.
"Come on homel” His lips had not moved.
Carrie shrank back, one hand fluttering to her laxed
lips. Then she lifted her chin defiantly, and her hand
dropped.
“Ah ain't a-comin' nowheres!" she cried. “Ah'll come
when Ah gits ready!”
She threw back her head and laughed-an ugly
laugh. But as her head came forward again, there was a
flash of steel. The laugh gave way to a scream, and the
scream in turn was drowned by the single report of a
pistol that blazed six inches from her eyes. She collapsed
at Grundy's feet across the threshold.
For a fleeting second he stared at the gaping hole that
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gushed a scarlet stream. Then he wheeled and fled. At
the Red Brick House he snatched up the skates he had
left before he made for the river.
The sound of the shot had carried far on the still
air. Hurrying forms passed him, but he had neither eyes
nor thought for them. Through his hot brain ricocheted
the single intelligence: "She's dead! She's dead!” It set
the beat for his flying feet.
On the ice he bent to fasten his skates, and as he did
so his fingers fumbled to his throat and to the chain
which hung there.
The charm! It was gone!
His eyes widened with panic. Then the panic closed
about him like water about a piece of bait on a crab-
line. A dark, oval object on a tuft of grass at his feet!
In his eager haste to reach it, he sprawled on his belly
and slid.
The charm was in his hands. He fondled it. He bab-
bled incoherently in his joy. But down to the ice-bound
shore swarmed a yelling mob. That spoke of no time to
lose. He swung to his feet. In a thrice he was a dark
streak on the ice blending with the gathering dusk.
And Jake had his revenge.
IV
It was a fitful day of light and shadow that Carrie
Prince was borne up Tilton Street and away from Herd-
ford town forever.
Jim Prince was taking her home. And he sat now in
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the enclosed carriage with his two daughters, his mind
extracting bitter and sweet memories from the past to
piece with thoughts of the present and the uncertain
future.
“Papa ..." Blanche's voice brushed aside the hush.
“Papa, I'm not going back to school. I'm going to stay
home with you an' Marty an' the farm."
Jim Prince made no reply. He recognized dimly that
a woman, not a child, had spoken; and that she and
Martha somehow had in their keeping the future that
baffled him.
Behind the little cortège walked Crazy Hiram, a
wan, emaciated figure clad in rags. And as he shambled
along he addressed himself conversationally to inani-
mate objects he passed. He followed Carrie the length
of Front Street and out onto the pike from Crosley's
bridge until they came to the pine woods where the
shadows deepened. There the weird creature stopped,
but his bloodshot eyes traveled after the funeral car-
riages until they were no more than swaying specks in
the white spine
his way back to the cubadour play-
Then he made his way back to the town, strumming
his guitar and muttering—a somber troubadour play-
ing only wild, eerie blues.
[188]


Chapter Twenty-five
TIM PRINCE stood upon a grassy knoll in one of
his fields and scanned the level farmland which
stretched away from him on all sides.
He had only this farm now. Competition had
grown among the merchants of Shrewsbury and
had borne down upon him. Debts owing him after
that spell of hard times years before had never been
paid, and for some reason—possibly because Carrie's
death had its mellowing effect—he had been loath to
use legal measures against his debtors. (Small good
such action would have been anyway, for one can-
not exact money where there is none.) So, on Blanche's
advice, he had sold the store, the livery-stable, and the
town house.
Now the sun lent its last energy to crimsoning the
blue above Prince's pine wood. To his right, next the
turnpike, Big George still tormented his lazy mules
with expert lashes of the reins upon their powerful
buttocks as they ripped the plow-blades through the
earth. To the left, Josh Williams slouched beside a
drag-harrow.
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“Hey, George! Josh!” called Prince. “It's time to
quit!”
Descending the knoll, Prince followed his men lei-
surely between the rows of his strawberry patch, exam-
ining each vine as he went along, for this long field was
his pride.
"Strawberries?" he had scoffed to Blanche three years
before. “Humph! They's too much trouble. 'Sides, you
don't git nuffin' outn 'em fo' a couple o' seasons."
Yet, here were the strawberries, and the picking sea-
son was at hand. It was another indication of the way
Prince's elder daughter had bent him to her will since
that day years before, in the funeral carriage, when the
reassuring clasp of her hand had revealed her in a new
womanly rôle.
He pushed through the turnstile, and made his way
to the back porch. Here he halted, and grinned at
what he saw.
"Put it back, Georgel” Blanche was saying. "Put it
right back!”
She stood at the big oilclothed table, one hand poised
in the act of arranging the table ware. There was no
anger or annoyance in the low notes of her voice, nor
in her facial expression. Her whole bearing suggested
an experienced school teacher repeating a command to
an erring pupil for the thousandth time, well aware
that it will have to be repeated again and still again.
Obeying sheepishly, Big George slipped a hot biscuit
back onto its serving-dish, and slouched into his chair
without a word. He had no retort even when Josh
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snickered through the suds at the wash-basin. And it
struck Jim Prince how easily his daughter exacted obe-
dience from others. Just what was it that made people
listen to her? The calm assurance with which she did
everything? The determined set of her head? Her long,
firm-treaded stride? The carriage of her shoulders, so
like Carrie? Jim Prince didn't know. He only rec-
ognized the commanding confidence with which she
swept everything and everybody before her.
He nodded his head in satisfaction as he watched
her, remembering how he had mourned young Jim. For
in Blanche he had more than a son. Sons become men
and as often as not leave the homes of their fathers, as
most daughters do. But Blanche, he was certain, would
never leave him. She was as much a part of the home-
stead as those twin oaks that stretched their gnarled
branches protectingly over the front yard and eaves of
the house.
His thoughts were interrupted by a halloo from
Martha and he turned to watch his younger daughter
approach. She was like a sleek, high-strung filly as she
swung blithely down the lane. Before the house a sud-
den notion seized her to leap the stagger rails fencing
the lane, and throwing back her two long braids of
hair, much as a horse tosses its mane, she charged the
barrier. She scaled it, with lanky adolescent legs flying,
but her dress caught on one of the splintery rails. For
a moment she hung there in mid air, clutching wildly
at her rear extremity. Then the cloth gave way and
she sprawled in the furrows of the field.
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Seeing that she was not injured, Jim Prince burst
into guffaws which brought Josh, George, and Blanche
in a rush from the kitchen.
Martha, the torn remnant of her dress in her hand,
stalked stiffly toward the laughing quartette on the
porch. But as she drew nearer, the ridiculous situation
was too much for her and she joined their shouts of
amusement.
"You-all sho won't have to drag that part of the field,
Papa,” she laughed. She threw her strapped books care-
lessly onto the porch. “Lawsy! I sho did hit that dirt!”
"Ain't you kind o' draughty, Marty?” snickered Josh.
"You must think you's a buzzard, honey," boomed
Big George.
As always, Martha had a pat answer. "George, you
know you ain't never seen no buzzard put his wings
where I put my hands when he's a-flyin'.” She turned
contritely to Blanche. “I'm sorry, sis', 'bout this dress.
I'll fix it.”
"Oh, that's all right, honey,” Blanche answered
through her smiles. “Only you hadn't ought to go
jumpin' and rippin' like that. You ain't no li'l' gal no
mo'. You's goin' to put on long dresses next week when
you finishes them studies with 'Fessah Johnson.”
"Long dresses!” cried Martha in delight. "Honest,
sis'? You's really goin' to let me put 'em on? And can
I put up my hair, too?"..
Blanche nodded assent as she led the way into the
kitchen. Martha was her one weak spot and the younger
girl knew it. She had only to let her full-bowed lips
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droop in a certain way and pucker her forehead just so
and Blanche inevitably weakened. For ten years now,
since the death of their mother, Blanche had watched
over her impulsive sister, loving her pixenish ways,
supervising her clothes and behavior, offering comfort-
ing arms when Martha's childish world went awry.
They were utterly different, these daughters of Jim
Prince. Blanche was sure, steady, would always swing
evenly within her ordained orbit. Martha, on the other
hand, was capricious and flighty. Now she was here,
now there. She might in one sudden burst of sponta-
neity flash to a dizzy height, then, leaving behind a trail
of spent vitality, as suddenly drop to oblivion. Her
recent attack on the fence, when she left behind the toll
of gingham, might be interpreted symbolically. For
Martha would always pay the price of her effort.
[193]


Chapter Twenty-six
IT WAS high noon. The Prince berry-patch lay, a
tumult of scarlet and green, in ripe readiness for
the short picking season.
"It's about time they was gittin' yere," said
- Prince to Blanche. They stood expectantly on the
back porch, facing the lane.
“Here they come now!" Blanche pointed over the
fields to the turnpike where two high farm wagons
slowly lurched toward the entrance of the lane.
Prince nodded. “Yep, dat's dem all right. Wonder
what dey's like. Will Morris says hisn come from up to
Kent County way, and dey's sho a moughty tough-
lookin' bunch. Saw some o' 'em yestiddy."
"Well, you went all the way to Belfort to get yo's.
Maybe they won't be so bad. Reckon we'll get much fo'
the berries this year?"
" 'Bout two dollars a crate. We sho gots a mess o' 'em.
Maybe you feels like tellin' me how wrong Ah was
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'bout 'em, eh?” Jim Prince cocked a humorous eye at his
daughter.
Blanche patted his arm affectionately. “You ain't the
only one with a head in this family, Mister Jim Prince,"
she answered.
“Yep, reckon not, gal. You sho knows how to figger
ahead, all right. Jes’ wish Marty had a hank’rin' the
same way."
"Oh, she's all right. Only thing, she's youngish. She'll
get over that after she gets to the Institute. 'Fessah
Johnson says she's a bright un in her books.”
Prince was silent a moment. Then he said, "Some-
times Ah thinks you spiles dat young un.”
"Reckon I do," Blanche confessed. “And look like
everybody else spiles her, too. She's so purty and-
and somep'n. I don't know what 'tis."
"Wal, you's done de best you could, gal.” Jim Prince
shook his head thoughtfully. "You know, you hadn't
ought to turned down 'Fessah Johnson like you done.
He'll make a purty fine husband.”
“I cain't be his wife and look after you and Marty
too,” Blanche reminded him. “And I don't know ef I
wants to get married. Menfolks is — ” She broke off
suddenly, seeing the expression on Prince's face. “No,
I ain't got enough eddication for him. I kin read and
write and count all right, but when it comes to talk I
jes' fo’gets 'bout grammer and talks like I been used
to doin'. ... Oh, shucks! I jes' don't love 'im no
ways.”
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Before Jim Prince could reply, Martha hailed them
from the first wagon. She had taken over the reins from
Josh and had whipped the mules into a trot. Now as she
drew up her steeds with a flourish before the gate
Prince and Blanche examined the newcomers.
There were thirty or forty of them, men and women
-even entire families. Like the oyster-shuckers Blanche
had known in Herdford, they were dressed fantastically
-the men in last winter's over-all jumpers and the
pants to their best suits, with exceedingly high-standing
collars, yellow "bulldog" brogue shoes, and wide straw
sailers setting off the ensembles. The women, in be-
sashed, belaced, bepleated hand-me-downs, were as in-
teresting after their fashion. And the luggage was no
less strange and varied. Tattered valises, carpet bags,
suitcases, huge blanketed bundles tied with rope, and
overflowing pillow-cases gave these laborers the appear-
ance of refugees.
A spare, angular man of burnt-brown complexion
strode with outstretched hand toward Prince. At each
step he gave a hitch to his pants with long arms which
he held close to his body. He had the bearing of an
elderly but still game cock.
"Howdy, Mistah Prince,” he began, maneuvering his
bulging quid from one cheek to the other. “Wal, yere
we is, the whole shootin'-match! Hope 'mongst-you's got
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Blanche and Prince hardly noticed her. They were
too concerned with the smiling young chap at her side
who towered head and shoulders above even Blanche,
and her height was that of the average man. ...
There was the same magnificently proportioned stature,
she was thinking; the same massive muscularity of
sweeping shoulders and arms; the same lithe absence of
waist. These details were easily observable because the
boy, unlike the other pickers, was clad simply in the
rough habit of the farm laborer. He was clean, but
much patched.
Blanche, having finished her scrutiny, lifted her eyes
slowly until they met Jimmy-Lew's. Then she relaxed,
for his eyes were hazel brown. And the roundness of
youth still lingered in the smiling dark face beneath
his fringy straw hat.
"Who be yo’ folks, Jimmy-Lew?" asked Blanche.
He pointed to a white-haired woman in the depart-
ing group who ambled beside two strapping girls and a
smaller barefoot boy. All three struggled with giant
bundles.
“That's mah grandmother an' mah two sisters an' li'l'
brother, ma'am,” he said.
"Where's yo' father and mother?" Blanche held her
breath.
The boy's smile faded. “Mah mother died 'bout ten
years ago,” he answered, eyes downcast. “Mah father
died in jail.”
Jim Prince started to speak, but Blanche caught his
arm.
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we jes' cain't send 'em away. Don't worry 'bout Marty.
I'll take care o’her-I'll talk to her.”
“All right,” said Prince, and shook his head. “But dis
is one time Ah sho thinks you's wrong-sartain!”
"Wait a minute, Papa," said Blanche as a sudden
thought struck her. “S'posin' you go over to Will Mor-
ris and see ef he needs four mo' pickers?”
Prince snapped eager fingers. “Dog-gone! That's
right! He told me no longer'n yestiddy he was short-
handed on 'count o' his fo'man didn't bring all de folks
he was s'posed to. Ah'll go right over an' see 'im.” And
he made rapidly for the barn.
His face was beaming when he returned an hour later.
"It's all right!” he exclaimed as he entered the
kitchen. "Will says they'll help ’im a lot. Ah'll go down
to de shanties wid a wagon an' haul 'em right over.”
“That's fine!” Blanche breathed her relief. “I'll go
with you."
III
The shanties that prevail in the lowlands of the
Eastern Shore of Maryland are flimsy architectural step-
children hastily conceived and birthed to shelter the
help a farmer must import for his harvest. The oblong
shed Prince had tossed up to house thirty-odd people
was thirty-six feet long by six feet wide; and this was
divided into six compartments by planked-wall par-
titions. Along the back and side walls of each compart-
ment were an upper and a lower bunk. And-touch of
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luxury—there was a floor of rough boards, laid at the
insistence of Blanche.
For the time spent in this crate-like shelter the fam-
ily unit would lose its identity, for all the men and
boys slept together, all the women and girls. If they
were an amicable group, the chores—such as supplying
wood for the cook-stoves and filling the communal
water barrel—would be divided evenly. If it rained,
all would be wetted. If it were hot, all would roast. In
every sense of the term, this was a share-and-share-alike
existence-even to coping with the vermin that infested
the straw of the bunks.
Following the wagon tracks that circled from the
farmhouse, Prince and Blanche neared the back of the
shanties in time to hear a guitar twanging a dance tune.
Open palms beat a rhythmical accompaniment and
mingled with exclamations of approval. The cause was
soon apparent, for there, at the corner of the shanties,
in the center of admiring timekeepers, was Martha ex-
ecuting a toe-tangling jig. Her newly acquired long
dress raised to her knees, her loosened hair flying wildly
about her bobbing head, she was lost completely in
the dance. Jimmy-Lew grinned merrily over his instru-
ment from a perch on a stove. As the furious finale
ended, and the girl tossed back her shower of hair from
a radiant wide-eyed face, Prince would have lunged
forward angrily, but Blanche stopped him.
“'Tain't no use to rile yo’self, Papa,” she whispered.
"Jes' call Jeb." For Blanche knew her sister well. And
she knew that no amount of scolding would quiet her
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restless feet, for those same feet, five years before, had
won a dance contest at a Shrewsbury minstrel show.
Martha was stage-struck.
When Jeb Harmon heard Prince's orders—that the
Grundy family were to be lent to Will Morris—he was
frankly disapproving. "You's losin' fo'o' yo' best
pickers,” he stated, flatly. “But Ah reckons you knows
what you's doin'."
As he went off on his distasteful errand, Blanche
called to Martha.
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squirmed a bit and then blurted: "I'd ruthah-I'd
ruthah - "
"You'd rather dance and sing," finished her teacher,
still smiling. “Is that it?"
Martha's head came up with a quick toss, but she said
nothing. Ike tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the arms
of his chair while he scanned the pretty face opposite
his. He said, softly, persuasively:
“It's all right, and natural, also, for you to dance and
sing, Martha. You're young, and you like those things.
But it's selfish of you to think as you do. You have abil-
ity for better things than just dancing and singing.
You've a good mind—if you hadn't one, I wouldn't
have bothered to help you as I've done. There is a need
---and there is going to be an even greater one in the
future—for young Negroes who have had training.
Right now there is a crying need for trained teach-
ers
“I don't want to be a teacher!” cried Martha, sulking
away from his gaze.
"You don't have to be a teacher," answered Ike, "but
it's the best opportunity for a young girl who wants
to do a great service for her people — "
"Huh! There's other girls who want to teach," re-
torted Martha. “I don't! I don't want to be in no
countrified town like this all my life-a-lookin' at the
same people, and a-doin' the same things all the time!
I don't want to!"
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Martha,”
stated Ike without raising his voice. “You know the
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nuthah. Ef you didn't want us, whyn't you tell Jeb
Harmon so befo' we come? 'Twarn't right '
“Is you gwine to git offn mah land?” Prince moved
forward, gripping the handle of his hoe menacingly.
The boy held his ground, and did not flinch when
the man almost touched him.
"I don't know why you don't want none o' me and
mine around,” he said, slowly, “but I reckon it's jes'
the same to me ef I do stay away!” And with that he
turned and walked off.
Martha, frowning discontentedly over her father's
berry-patch, did not know all this. She only wondered
why she had not seen Jimmy-Lew. And she wondered
if he would play with the Morris pickers' baseball team,
which had challenged the Prince pickers to a game this
very Saturday afternoon. It was to be a prelude to a
straw-ride in the evening.
III
Shrewsbury was enjoying itself at the ball ground.
Three, four, five, six deep, spectators bordered the field,
while others perched on the tops of buggies and the
highest rails of hay-wagons. Saturday was "grubbin'-up"
day and the town was crowded with shoppers who
wanted and expected some sort of diversion before they
scattered to their homes.
Martha had left her father and Blanche with the
stipulation that she would meet them at the general
merchandise store on Main Street. Now she squirmed
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The crowd, now fully aroused by the dramatics tak-
ing place, jeered viciously. Boos and cat-calls split the
air. “Take 'im out! Take 'im out!” The cry became a
chant.
But Josh placed too much trust in Jimmy-Lew's seem-
ing unreadiness, for as he sent the next ball to the plate,
an amazing thing happened. Without shouldering his
bat, Jimmy-Lew leaned forward and swung in an arch-
ing, upward swipe from the ground. All of his powerful
shoulder muscles were in that quick, rhythmical lunge.
The white pellet sailed higher, higher, out over the
center fielder who had been caught lamentably nap-
ping, then plunged into the fallow ground beyond the
bounds of the field. Jimmy-Lew, in the meantime, had
started on the circuit of the bases. Like some blooded
stallion with the bit in his teeth, head high, body al-
most at perpendicular, he shot out in strides that fairly
devoured the first base line. By the time he rounded the
turn at second, the fielder had retrieved the ball. A
beautiful throw relayed it to the left fielder. Then si-
lence smothered the crowd. Would Jimmy-Lew try for
a score?
Martha clenched her hands, her bright eyes widened
to their capacity. Without knowing what she did, she
screamed:
“Run, Jimmy-Lew! Run!”
He may have heard for his legs seemed to draw up
a trifle higher at the knees, and his pace quicken. A
split second before the ball thudded into the catcher's
mitt, he charged across the home plate.
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Now the throng, which a few moments before had
clamored for his blood, went mad in admiration. But
Martha stood wilted and chagrined behind first base,
her chin tilted at a disdainful angle.
In the last half of the ninth inning Jimmy-Lew had
still made the lone score of the game. The Prince team
was at bat and Skinny was pitching for the Morrises. He
had hopes of a no-hit, no-run victory.
The first man to face him, a little rabbit-like fellow,
pranced and capered exasperatingly before the plate
until he was presented with a base on balls. Not con-
tent with this, the pirate, aided by a long hook-slide,
took possession of second base at the very next pitch.
Unnerved at this point, Skinny made a wild throw,
which, before it was recovered by the catcher, found
the base-runner crowing on third.
Supporters of the Prince team, sensing a last-stand
rally, whooped up their chatter, which did nothing to
calm the harassed pitcher. He had lost all control of
the ball, and now eight wild tosses in rapid succession
found the poor chap in an agonizing predicament with
all of the bases lodging runners who waited only for
the crack of the bat to bolt them scoring over the tri-
angle in front of the catcher.
The din rose deafeningly over the field while the
pitcher and the catcher held a hurried consultation.
The desperate Skinny poised on the mound in a slow
wind-up, but the ball barely reached the batter before
it dug into the dirt. The next was no better, for it went
wide, outside.
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With bases full, no outs, and two balls on a possible
pass for a tying run, Skinny dejectedly contemplated
the batter before him. It was the same stocky short-stop
who had been clouting hot, skidding grounders through-
out the game. Skinny knew that the only thing that
had saved him from humiliation thus far had been
his foe's lack of placement. Granting that he succeeded
in achieving a strike-out, which was obviously doubtful,
there were two other batters to follow whose long fouls
had been a source of considerable worry. Skinny did
not relish his position. His nerve was gone—he knew it.
And the crowd was unmerciful.
He spat out his flavorless quid, said something to Big
George, and dropped the ball.
"Time out!” bawled the umpire over the jeers of the
crowd.
Skinny ran over to Jimmy-Lew and tendered his mitt.
"What's the matter?” grinned Jimmy-Lew. "Scared?”
"You's got one ball to lose,” said the vanquished
pitcher, ignoring the jibe.
Jimmy-Lew's grin widened. “I don't reckon I'll be
a-needing of it,” he boasted. And as he walked over to
the abdicated mound there was a flaunting confidence
about the boy's bearing that abruptly hushed the jeer-
ing mob.
Shrewsbury lads, for many years to come, were to
hear of the feat performed by Jimmy-Lew Grundy that
day. Narrators garnish the legend with extravagant
hyperbole and quaint simile, but the facts are these:
Upon entering the pitcher's box, Jimmy-Lew threw
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exactly nine strikes-nine ribbons of sizzling white that
streamed waist-high over the platel Three bewildered
batsmen faced him, and went down. And when the re-
port of that last strike resounded from the catcher's
mitt, the crowd, with customary fickleness, was at
Jimmy-Lew's feet.
IV
Martha slunk away, half-provoked, half pleased with
Jimmy-Lew's heroics. She had not gone far when a
voice stopped her.
“How'd you like the game, Mis' Prince?”
Martha assumed the role of coquette.
“Oh ... it was fair to middlin',” she said.
"You cain't fool me," chuckled Jimmy-Lew. “You
wanted me fo' to win that game, didn't you?”
"Oh, did I?"
“Wal-didn't you?"
“Whyn't you speak to me?" countered the girl ac-
cusingly. “You heard me callin' to you. And you ain't
even been near our place since you left!”
"I ain't used to goin' places whar I ain't wanted,” re-
plied the boy.
“What you mean? Where ain't you wanted?” Martha
turned angry sloe eyes on him. “You's usin' that fo' a
'scuse, that all!” Young Grundy's arm found its way
around her waist.
“Honey," he pleaded, “hope an die yo paw told me
to keep offn his land! Don't you know why?”
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no time fo' no gal what runs with married men and
them that ain't her eekles. 'Sides,” he added, softly, “I
ain't a-wantin' nobody but you, no ways."
"Well”—Martha was unconvinced but pleased—“she
sho acted like she owned you."
“Wal—she don't! An' that's that!”
They took their time walking. The afternoon sun
still lingered, and it was pleasant along the shell road
with the town just ahead.
Within a few rods of the store where Jim Prince had
tied his horse, Martha turned to Jimmy-Lew.
“Papa don't like you, maybe, but—but I do!
And—” She halted, looking at the ground. “Jimmy-
Lew, do you want me to be on that straw-ride?"
“Course I do!” cried the boy delightedly. “But you
said yo' sister "
"I'll be on that straw-ride, Jimmy-Lew!"
But you can't go out, Martha. Blanche don't want
you to.
I don't carel Jimmy-Lew'll be there, and so will Judy,
and ...
But Josh and Big George'll be there, too. They'll tell
Papa and Blanche in the morning, sure's you're born!
I don't care! 'Sides, they'll be so drunk they won't
know who I am.
But suppose Blanche and Papa hear you going out
or coming in?
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They won't. I'll climb out on the limb of the big ap-
ple tree in front of my window. And I'll come in the
same way.
But you hadn't ought to go. Blanche said no.
I don't care! I don't care!
But suppose something happens? You know how
much Blanche wants you to go to school. You know
how much Blanche loves you.
I don't care! I don't care!
You've never been out without Blanche before.
There might be a fight. You know how these pickers
carry on when they get to drinking.
Jimmy-Lew'll be there. I ain't scared. Jimmy-Lew'll
be there. He's strong!
Here they come now! Hear the horses? Hear them
singing? Hear Jimmy-Lew's guitar a-playin'? But don't
go out, Marthal Don't!
I will! I will! ...
Shucks, I knew it would be easy!
"Martha!”
Jimmy-Lew jumped down from the straw and lifted
her bodily into the wagon.
“You did come, didn't you?” The boy was highly
elated.
"Sho,” replied the girl, as if she had done the easiest
thing imaginable. “Where's Judy?”
"Now there you go!” chided the boy. “She's in town
[215]


Chapter Twenty-eight
I
HE berries thinned and finally vanished in
the lowland patches. The season was over
and the pickers were leaving for home. And
now the Shrewsbury shopkeepers rubbed
elated hands together, for sales were mount-
ting as the scattering pickers indulged in their seasonal
spending spree.
The proprietor of the town's clothing store, Heinrich
Schroder, was especially gleeful. All the morning of
the second Saturday in June, and right up to the shriek-
ing approach of the afternoon train, the Schroders were
kept busy.
"Such a loveliness in the feet, lady," Frau Schroder
would gush. And the teeth of some splay-footed woman
picker would gleam in spite of the agonizing pressure
of new leather. (One's shoe could come off in the train.)
“Ach! Just like the glove, mein friend!” Thus Hein-
rich, the elder, would convince a new customer who
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frowned dubiously at a suit. Scratching fingers would
rake an itchless head. The garment was sold.
Young Heinrich held forth in the haberdashery de-
partment. “Just like they're wearing in New York,” he
blandly informed the men and boys as he displayed a
screaming cravat or a candy-striped shirt.
The money drawers yawned greedily. The pickers'
pockets grew lighter. They had made another season.
Martha stared gloomily down the hot, dusty road
from the farm wagon in which she and Josh drove the
Prince crew to the depot. She wished the wagon's oc-
cupants wouldn't chatter so.
“Wonder ef the weeds done growed up in the back
yard. ...
"You reckon the crabs is much this year?"
"Hope A’nt Lizzie looked to my chickens whilst I was
gone."
"Stop bein' so fidgety, Georgie! I'll smack the taste
outn you!"
Martha wished they would stop chattering. Didn't
they know Jimmy-Lew was going away?
They were jolting by the pine wood where she had
stolen every night except the night it rained last week.
. . . She wouldn't climb out by the apple tree any
more. Jimmy-Lew was leaving. She wouldn't have to
wait to hear her father's deep snoring, or to hear Ike
Johnson's departing footsteps, before she could go to
Jimmy-Lew. Jimmy-Lew was leaving. There would be
no more soft strumming on the guitar, no more tender
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whispering from lips so persuasive against her own.
Jimmy-Lew was leaving.
They had passed the pine wood.
In town, Martha eluded Blanche and her father to
go in search of Jimmy-Lew. She saw him through the
window of Schroder's store. My! how nice he looked in
his spankin'-new blue serge pants, tan shoes, and white
shirt! He saw her and waved for her to come in. No,
she shook her head, and signaled that she'd wait for
him. He came presently, his discarded clothes in a
package under his arm.
"Couldn't git a whole suit,” he explained sheepishly,
after greeting her. He looked wistfully at the suits dis-
played in the window. “Had to let Granny have most
my money."
"You looks grand, honey!” Martha stood off at a lit-
tle distance and beamed admiringly. Then dissatisfac-
tion edged her voice. “I bet you'll do some struttin'
when you gits home. Bet all yo' sweethearts start to
fightin' 'bout you.”
"Aw now—there you go!” he reproved her. “Ain't I
done told you you's the only gal I ever liked in my
whole life?”
Martha smiled up at him happily--pacified.
They turned into a side street where neither Jim
Prince nor Blanche would be likely to find them. Then
they walked until they found themselves on the white
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turnpike. Finally they came to the pine wood. It was
just past one o'clock. The train did not come until
three. They had time. ...
Once more they sat under their pine tree and talked.
Silly talk. Young talk.
"Sho don't want to leave this place, honey."
"I don't want you to, nuthah.”
“I bin thinkin'. Bet you ain't gonna think 'bout me
when you's 'way to school.”
"I ain't goin' to think 'bout nothin' else!"
The boy made a confession: “I ain't told you nuffin'
'bout it, but I done decided to go to school this winter.
They's gonna give night studies to Eastland, an' I fig.
gered I could 'bout make most o' the classes ef the
shuckin' ain't so hard or I ain't 'way on a dredge boat.”
He glanced at Martha to see how she received this in-
formation. She squeezed his hand.
"I warn't noways wantin' my wife to know more'n
me,” he ended, shyly.
Martha said nothing, only kissed him in awkward,
girlish fashion. And in the silence which followed there
was complete forgetfulness of the world near by.
III
Jim Prince and Blanche accosted the boy and the
girl sternly as they came breathlessly under the shed of
the station house.
"Whar you bin?" demanded Prince over the shriek
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of the approaching train. He seized Martha roughly by
the shoulder and spun her around to face him.
Before she could answer, the air was shattered with
screams. Then horror clamped down upon the crowd.
A child had walked onto the tracks in front of the
train, and would have perished before the eyes of the
paralyzed, witless onlookers had not a lithe body shot
forward. The child was thrust to safety, but Jimmy-Lew
was caught beneath the monster engine.
Martha knew nothing after the horrible sound of
brakes grinding
[221]


Chapter Twenty-nine
YOR her father Martha had moody, accusing eyes
that said: “Your last words to him were harsh.
You were unkind to him always.” For Blanche
she had only silence.
Day succeeded day, each a meaningless repe-
tition except for a visit, every afternoon, to the pine
tree that bore the initials “M. P." and "J. L. G."-hers
and Jimmy-Lew's.
“ 'Tain't no use lettin' it upset you, Papa,” said
Blanche when Prince complained of the girl's behavior.
“Marty'll be gittin' off to school in a few mo' weeks.
She's young. She'll get over this."
Then, one sultry morning late in August fear settled
on Martha, and grew to panic as the morning pro-
gressed. She sat on the porch, tried to calm herself, to
think.
If she was pregnant—and there had been cause to
worry for a week now—something must be done. She
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thought of girls she knew "gittin' in trouble.” She re-
called the sly nods and wagging tongues. She knew what
a choice tidbit her own disgrace would be: Blanche's
humiliation ... her father's grief ... her own un-
happy future if she stayed in Shrewsbury or was sent
away from the Institute.
If she stayed ... that was a thought! Suppose she
didn't stay? Suppose she ran away? Other girls had run
away from Shrewsbury. Minnie Thomas . . . Sofie
Lewis ... plenty of girls. That wasn't such a disgrace.
Martha's head lifted. Her jaw set itself in a stubborn
line and her childishly soft lips lost their pout. She
glanced at the clock in the kitchen. It was ten. She had
an hour to catch the short-line train to Eastland. And
from there . . . She didn't care where she went from
there.
In furious haste she packed the valise which Blanche
had purchased preparatory to her going to the Institute.
This she hid in the back of the buggy. Then she went
to her father's room, to the bureau where he kept his
money. There was forty dollars in all. She thrust twenty-
five into the first grown-up pocketbook she had ever had.
When she had scrawled a note to Blanche and her
father and washed her face, she ran out into the fields.
Blanche was in the potato-patch crushing bugs on the
steel of her hoe. Tall and comforting she looked, and
Martha wanted to throw herself into her sister's bared
arms. Instead she smiled her brightest.
"Well, honey,” Blanche greeted her, relieved to see
the child apparently so cheerful, "you looks like yo’self
fo' sho! Gonna help me git rid o' these here 'tater bugs?”
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I'd a-had to stay right in Shrewsbury all my life-
a-lettin' folks talk 'bout me. I won't do it!
Where you going, Marty?
I don't know. I don't care! Philly, maybe. Maybe
New York.
You don't know anybody in Philly or New York,
Marty! What'll you do when your money's all gone?
Who's going to look after you when ...
Leave me be! I'll take care o' myself.
There's the train a-blowin' now! You'd better turn
back, Marty.
I won't! I won't! I'm goin' 'way from this town! I'll
be all right ... I'll be all right ...
III
Jim Prince plodded his fields, a tired and very wor-
ried man, and thought of his daughters. For a week
now there had been no word from Martha. Neither
telegrams nor the services of the police had produced
a trace of her. Martha had vanished as if by magic.
To add to his distraction, Blanche-usually so calm and
self-controlled—had given way completely to her emo-
tions. “It's my fault! It's my fault!” she kept repeating.
And no words Prince could say would comfort her.
On the other hand, she appeared to derive more than
ordinary comfort from the presence of Ike Johnson.
And the professor was taking advantage of the crisis in
the Prince family life to make himself useful. He dic-
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tated telegrams. He fed the chickens. He coaxed Blanche
from the brink of hysterics.
Only last night Prince had seen Ike plant a hurried
kiss upon the lips of his elder daughter as the two stood
at the swinging gate. And Blanche—so her father
thought-had not been so sad today. Prince had mis-
givings. Perhaps Blanche, too, would leave him, now
that the responsibility for Martha no longer rested
upon her shoulders. Prince couldn't rightfully object.
The professor was everything a man could wish for in
a son-in-law. He was well able to care for a wife. And
if a colored high school was built in Shrewsbury—there
was talk of one-Ike's future was pretty well assured.
For he was the logical one to be the principal.
But what would Prince do without Blanche?
"Ah ain't gwine to stand in de way,” he told himself.
But he realized suddenly how necessary this daughter
had become to the peaceful conduct of his life.
Ike proceeded with his courtship, not impulsively,
but with calm ardor. Then one day in autumn Prince
was invited to listen to the plans the young people had
hatched.
"An' the school board's made Ike the principal of the
new high school, Papa,” concluded Blanche. “So I was
thinkin' we could live right here on the farm.”
One of Jim Prince's rare smiles flitted briefly across
his face.
[226]


Chapter Thirty
ARTHA ventured another glance about
the car, this time noting more purpose-
fully the faces of her fellow travelers.
Their utter impersonality was disheart-
ening. She shrank once more against
the sill of her window, not bothering to wipe away the
tears that stole down her cheeks and drifted between
her quivering, parted lips. She had to admit it-she
was frightened.
Then diversion boarded the train at Claybridge,
which is a junction point near the boundary of Mary-
land and Delaware. Tired of watching the bustle at the
station, Martha shifted her worried eyes to the seat
across the aisle. At the same time its occupant shifted
her position, and a pair of hazel eyes met Martha's
black ones. It was Judy!
Martha's first impulse was to turn away. But she was
too relieved at seeing any familiar face, whether it be-
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longed to enemy or friend. So she returned Judy's gaze
with one of curious surprise.
Judy spoke first. “You-all goin' far?"
"Philly," replied Martha, shortening the name in an
effort at nonchalance. But nonchalance fied before
Judy's incredulous grin as her eyes traveled critically
over Martha's gingham dress. Martha bit her lip and
looked away in hot embarrassment. She felt Judy slip
into the seat beside her.
"What's the matter?" Judy laid a persuasive hand on
Martha's shoulder.
Martha dropped her head and Judy smiled know-
ingly—a one-sided smile.
"Who was it— Jimmy-Lew?" she asked.
Martha made no answer.
"Aw, 'tain't yo’ fault, honey,” soothed Judy. "What
yo' folks do-put you out?”
"Nol" Martha's head shot up defiantly. “I jes' come
on 'way befo' they found out.”
"Oh . .," Judy's freckled brow contracted, puzzled.
And again: "Oh ..." Then: “Well, what in hell you
goin' away fo'?"
Martha shook her head dumbly.
"Come on--betcha hongry-let's eat," Judy said,
brusquely, and reached for a shoe-box from the seat
she had vacated.
"I don't want none," said Martha.
"Don't be no fool-you gots to eat," answered Judy,
practically
Martha took the fried chicken leg proffered her and
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at the first bite she knew how hungry she was. She al-
most snatched a biscuit from Judy.
“Naw, you ain't hongry-much!” mocked Judy.
When they had made away with the contents of the
box, Martha asked Judy where she was going.
"Philly. Got a a'nt there," replied the girl. “Says she
got a job fo' me. Ef you wants to, you kin stay with us.”
To Martha this was equivalent to an invitation to
heaven, the solution to her most pressing problem.
Then her face fell.
“No, I can't go with you,” she said, gloomily. “Yo'
a'nt might not like it when she finds out 'bout me."
"Huh!" Judy scoffed. “You must think you's the only
gal what ever had a baby without bein' marriedl I gots
one-year old-home with my folks. Shucks! 'Tain't yo'
fault Jimmy-Lew got killed. Wouldn't a-mind havin'
one o' hisn myself." Her smile made Martha feel easier.
She added: "A’nt Liddy ain't been no angel herself!
What's yo' name?"
Martha told her.
“All right, Marty—it's a go. 'Course, now, don't let
me make you do nothin' you don't want to do.”
“Oh, I'll go with you!” exclaimed Martha, eagerly.
"I can pay yo' a'nt until I get a job.”
"Don't let that worry you,” said Judy, magnani-
mously. Then she looked Martha over critically.
“Reckon you better change yo' dress ef you got a better
one,” she suggested. She smoothed the mail-order gar-
ment she wore, and adjusted her hat at a cockier angle.
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The suit was of gray serge, and she carried it to attrac-
tive advantage. Judy had that something called “style.”
When Martha returned to her seat, she had on a blue
serge outfit selected, with Blanche's help, from Mark-
son's Magazine. It set off her slim figure and soft beauty
perfectly.
"Sho look kind o' good, gal,” said Judy, with relief
in her voice. She had a horror of appearing countrified,
and hadn't relished the thought of being seen with one
who fitted that description. To her dying day Judy was
to stand firmly for what she later termed “class.”
The train paused at Wilmington and then took up
the rattling journey. Twilight gathered and the girls
grew silent. Suddenly Martha asked:
“Why'd you pay any attention to me? I thought you
didn't like me on 'count o' - "
"Jimmy-Lew?" finished Judy. “I don't hold no hard
feelin's long. 'Sides, he was just a notion, anyways, to
me. That's the way I am. I ain't lovin' no man no mo'
-never!” Her laugh had a hard edge to it that was
unpleasant. "Guess I felt sorry fo' you.” She shrugged.
Broad Street station, with its bustling crowds, made
Martha glad that she was with Judy.
“Porter, sir?"
“Porter, ma'am?”
“Kin Ah help you, suh?”
Martha started to relinquish her valise to one of the
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porters who glided skillfully among the disembarking
travelers, but Judy pinched her arm.
"You ain't got no money to waste on no red-cap,
gal,” she stated, out of the wisdom of practical experi-
ence. “They spots you ef they thinks you's from the
country, 'cause country bucks always tips big so's to
make folks think they's what they ain't.”
Having made this pronouncement on conduct in a
big city, Judy adjusted her hat on her sandy hair, seized
her bag, and weaved ahead, followed meekly by Martha.
They had hardly passed through the big iron gate
when a stoutish woman swooped down on Judy and
gathered girl, bag, and all into her capacious arms.
“A’nt Liddy!” gasped Judy.
“Lawdy, gal, you's a woman, sho enough!" A’nt Liddy
stood off at a little distance to look over her niece.
Martha felt immediately at ease with this broad-
beamed, capable-appearing woman. She liked the pleas-
ant cheerfulness of her freckled mulatto face, the amia-
bility of her laugh. Fiery wisps of hair that showed
under A’nt Liddy's umbrella-brimmed hat gave a clue
to the origin of Judy's sandy thatch.
A’nt Liddy shifted her attention to Martha. "Who's
this here, Judy?” There was a friendly twinkle in her
gray eyes.
"She's my best friend, A'nt Liddy,” answered Judy,
easily. "She's come to Philly lookin' fo’ work, too."
"Well now, that's sho nice," beamed A’nt Liddy.
"You got folks here, honey?"
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Judy didn't give Martha a chance to reply. “Oh, I
told her she could stay with us, A'nt Liddy."
"Sho, gal, that's right. I gots a room what'll be jes'
right fo' you young uns."
“An' I thought,” Judy rushed on, "seein's how you
got a employment office, it'd be easier fo' her to git a
job-
“Sho—sho," agreed A’nt Liddy. “Don't you worry,
chile, I'll be a-lookin' out fo’ both you-all.” She patted
Martha on the shoulder. “Come on, let's git goin'. I
gots supper all ready.”
She led the way through the station and out the
Broad Street entrance. Martha had never seen so many
people in one street before in all her life. And the
buildings appeared huge. She was silent with amaze-
ment and not a little thrilled by the crowds, the noise,
and the brilliant lights. She'd heard tales of the won-
ders of remote “Philly.” Now she was actually there!
They boarded a crowded street car and rode until
A'nt Liddy said, “Here we is, gals.” Then they got off.
To Martha South Street fairly swarmed with colored
people-more than she'd ever seen at a fair, or at camp-
meetings, or in town grubbin'-up on Saturday nights.
And there were kitchen smells in abundance, for it was
a neighborhood of restaurants.
Halfway up the block A’nt Liddy turned into a door
beside a big window which bore the legend: LYDIA WIL-
LIAMS-EMPLOYMENT BUREAU. She flung the door wide
in a gesture of welcome.
"Here you is. We's home!"
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When A’nt Liddy had touched a match to a gas jet,
Martha could see that the place was the essence of
cleanliness and order. In one corner to the left stood
a roll-top desk with a comfortable armchair designed
especially for the accommodation of A'nt Liddy's bulk.
Flanking the walls ran benches, and down the middle
of the room were three rows of chairs. The linoleumed
floor gleamed. And not a smear marred the surface of
the curtained show window. On the wall near the desk
was a small box-like contraption with a crank to it.
Martha guessed it to be a telephone.
"Sho is got a nice office, A'nt Liddy,” commented
Judy. .
“Yep-ain't so bad,” agreed the proprietor, compla-
cently. “But come on out in the kitchen.” And she
bustled through the back door of the office, with the
girls close at her heels.
In the kitchen Martha again witnessed the wonder
of light leaping out of a thin pipe.
“Yeah,” A’nt Liddy said, seeing the direction of
Martha's gaze, “things is a whole lot easier here than
they is down home. No water to tote, no lamp chimneys
to clean, an'”-her eyes twinkled—“you-all kin take a
bath every day, 'stead o' jes' on Sat’days."
She liked these two. She liked their youthfulness and
their eagerness. She had been like that years ago-full
of "git up.” But she wondered what was worrying the
new young un. She had an idea, but she hoped it wasn't
that. Well, she wouldn't worry her with too many ques-
tions yet-a-while.
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III
Martha lay between the cool, sweet-smelling sheets,
enjoying the effects of a bath and vigorous rub-down.
How clean she felt! It certainly was different from stoop-
ing and standing in one of the wooden washtubs at
home. She had been able actually to lie down in Mis'
Liddy's gleaming-white tub. Above Mis' Liddy's hum
in the adjoining room she could hear Judy splashing.
A train whistle blew, and turned her thoughts to
Jimmy-Lew and the folks back home. She hoped they
weren't too upset by her disappearance. She still thought
she had taken the best step.
Judy came in, her hair twisted in little sandy tufts
about her head, and slipped into bed. Through the
ceiling above them drifted strains from a piano that
had never known an expert tuner. Nevertheless, there
was a catchy rhythm to the music.
Mis' Liddy thrust her head into the doorway from
her room. “That's them theater people up there," she
informed them, almost apologetically. “They mought
keep up that rumpus right smart o' the night. Hope
they don't bother you much.” Then she vanished.
The girls lay listening to the discordant sounds from
above. Now a soprano was singing and Judy started to
hum:
“Tell me, long tall papa,
Where did you stay las' night?
Tell me, long tall papa,
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Where did you stay las' night?
Now, yo' hair's all nappy
An' yo'clo'es doan' fit you right!"
Judy's sinuous body was weaving in the bed as she
snapped her fingers toward the ceiling: “Aw, sing it,
gal!” The voice obligingly continued:
“Look yere, long tall papa,
Ef you ain' home to stay,
Look yere, long tall papa,
Ef you ain' home to stay,
Ah's gonna pack mah suitcase
An' make mah git-away!”
Now Martha's contralto joined in:
“Look yere, long tall papa,
Dis ain' gonna do a-tall!
Look yere, long tall papa,
Dis ain' gonna do a-talll
An' ef you keeps on a-doin' it
Ah got 'nothah mule fo' yo' stall!”
When the piano and voice above had moaned to a
stop, Judy looked at Martha in surprise.
“They told me you could sing, gal!” she exclaimed.
“You gots a alto what is a alto, sho 'nuf!”.
Martha smiled. “You don't sound like no crow yo'-
self.”
“You know,” said Judy, looking at Martha specula-
tively, “we mought git a job with some show.” Her
hazel eyes glowed at the prospect. It was the first time
Martha had seen her animated. For if Judy had any
feelings, she seldom showed them. Everything she did,
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even walking, was stamped by a pronounced lack of in-
terest. Cat-like—the adjective suited her. She moved
like a cat and she had about as much emotional verve.
It was this very quality that was to catch the fancy of
theater-goers a few years later.
“Kin you dance any?" she asked.
"Sho, a little," was Martha's conservative reply. Could
she dance, indeed!
Judy was jubilant. But she immediately sobered.
"Aw, hell!” she groaned. “I clean fo’got."
Martha knew what Judy had forgotten.
"Well, it won't be too late afterwards."
“Yeah,” came Judy's muffled reply from under the
sheets. "Yeah-ef you don't git too fat!” Her voice was
tart.
"You ain't fat, is you?" Martha flung back. And she
returned the sly pinch that Judy gave her.
[236]


Chapter Thirty-one
I
IT up! Git up from there, you lazy scamps!
What in 'ell you tryin' to do? Sleep 'twell
Gab'el blows? Git up!"
Martha and Judy sat up in sleepy con-
fusion to stare stupidly and a bit fright-
ened at Mis' Liddy. One look at her face, though, was
enough to start them giggling. Her freckles mingled
and separated as great gusts of laughter shook her. She
leaned against the wall, clutching the covers she had
snatched from them.
"You-all-you-all,” she gasped, “must o' thought I
was the devil!”
Judy assumed a frown.
“What kind of a way is this to treat yo' niece what's
come to stay with you? I'll fix you.” And she flung a
pillow at her aunt that caught Mis' Liddy flush in the
face and gave off a shower of feathers. In reply, Mis'
Liddy charged the bed, seized both girls in her strong,
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freckled arms, and rolled them tightly in the bottom
sheet. Then she reeled laughing into the kitchen, where
breakfast had been noiselessly prepared.
After the merry meal was finished, Martha took her
courage in both hands.
“Mis' Liddy, I–I want to tell you somep'n —
Mis' Liddy interrupted: “I know what you gonna
say, honey." Her smile seemed to Martha to rival the
bright softness of a single sunbeam slanting through
the kitchen window across the sink's white enamel. “I
knows. I reckon I kin jes' 'bout guess why you come
'way from home. I reckon you don't want to go back,
nuthah. I ain't tellin' you to go back, and I ain't tellin'
you to stay. But I is tellin' you you kin stay here with
us long's you wants—an' there ain't gone be no charge.
Only thing—you gots to do as I says. I'm gonna look
to you same's you was my own chile." Then, after a
moment: “Well, what you say, gal?”
“Yes'm—I mean, thank you, Mis' Liddy!” Martha
was tearfully grateful.
"Well”—Mis' Liddy's freckles clashed—“that's 'bout
that! An' i'll smack the water out'n you ef you don't
mind me—see?"
Now she turned and pounced upon Judy.
“Yo'maw writ an' told me 'bout how you was runnin'
with married men!”
“Why, A'nt Liddy!" Judy's assumption of injured
surprise was perfect.
"Don't you 'why, A’nt Liddy' me!" stormed the big
woman. “You's too much like me—I knows you! Now
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sleepy lids, while Mis Liddy tried to pierce the armor
of her nonchalance with last-minute counseling
"An' don't you git sassy with Mis Saadley, puthah.
'Member you's workin' fo' her." It was Mis Liddy's
parting shot, and in order to deliver it she had to trail
Judy from the kitchen table to the front door.
Judy gave a final yawn.
"I needs a winter coat, A’nt Liddy. I'm waitin' 'twell
1 gits that befo' I do any sassin'." She winked at Martha.
"Don't let A'nt Liddy kill you with work, gal!" And she
was off.
"Lazy, red-headed heifer!”
But Martha was not deceived. She knew that the
exclamation was really a blessing.
Left to herself, Martha went about the business of
putting the bedrooms and kitchen to order. Then, as
soon as she could, she joined Mis’ Liddy in the office.
It was crowded, for Monday was a busy day. The
benches along the walls were occupied by the men; the
chairs down the center of the room, by the women.
There was every indication that Mis’ Liddy was an ex-
tremely popular and well-patronized agent.
Now she looked up from the ledger in which she was
making an entry and beckoned Martha to the chair be-
side the desk. She was engaged with a sloppily dressed
woman who slouched at her elbow.
"Ah'm a-lookin' fo' a sleep-in job, Mis' Williams,"
the woman was saying. “Somep’n what ain't so hard ...
you know. . . . Ah ain't bin so well yere lately, Mis’
Williams. ..." Her voice took on a wheedling tone.
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Martha noted the sudden hardening of Mis' Liddy's
jaw as she leaned over the corner of her desk and in a
voice that was barely audible said:
“You listen to me, Nanny Johnson! I sent you on a
job two weeks agoan' what did you do? You kin cook
all right. But Mis' Laney called me up and give me the
devil fo' sendin' you to her! You know why?" Mis’
Liddy's ears looked like slices of beets to Martha. "I'll
tell you why! It's 'cause you don't keep yo’self neat an'
clean! I wouldn't send you on another job to save you,
'twell you kin show me you means to do better! Now
you git outn here, an' ef you don't like the way I talks
to you, you kin try somebody else's agency! Git!” And
before the fiery eyes of Mis' Liddy there was nothing
for Nanny to do but "git.”
Mis' Liddy turned to Martha with a snort and shoved
the ledger toward her.
“Take this down,” she ordered. “'Nanny Johnson,
212 Elmsley Alley—no job 'twell she gits clean'!” She
scowled at Martha. “An' there ain't nothin' to grin
'bout!” she added vehemently.
So it went all day. The applicants were of every kind
and class: dirty laborers in overalls, primly dressed
women who spoke in soft tones and inquired about
positions as housekeepers, nurses, and day-workers.
Time and again Mis' Liddy proved her judgment of
human nature by a terse phrase which summed up her
opinion of a person's capabilities, character, and ap-
pearance: "lazy-lookin'”—“smart, but looks like she
might be flip with the madam”-"neat as a pin, suit
Job 'twell cm. Nanny Job
Martha
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anybody—" These and other little notes Martha scrib-
bled beside the names she entered alphabetically in the
big, blue-backed book.
Early in the afternoon there was a breathing-spell for
sandwiches and tea.
"You mustn't take on 'bout how I talks to you some-
times,” said Mis' Liddy between bites, “but some o'
these no-'counts makes me mad'n blazes! There's that
Nanny Johnson-one o' the best cooks in the city—but
she ain't got gumption or sense enough to keep clean.
When I sends Nanny out on a job an' the madam ain't
pleased with her, that makes it hard fo' me to send an-
other colored woman on that same job. White folks is
funny. Ef one colored man or woman do somep'n
wrong, they takes all colored folks to be the same way.
There ain't no sense in it, but they does, an' that's why
these furriners is takin' house jobs 'way from us. Use
to be a time when nothin' but colored had butler an'
cook jobs. But ef it keeps on like this we ain't gonna
have no kind o' jobs. Booker Washington says we gotta
beat everybody else doin' things ef we wants a chance
to do 'em. An' that's right!”
Martha could not help but believe that there was
wisdom in what the big woman said. She had often
heard Jim Prince talk in the same fashion.
III
While they were eating supper, Judy arrived, and
stood scowling in the kitchen doorway.
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"So!” she blazed. “So you had a nice, easy job fo'
me, did you? Nothin' hard a-tall! Nothin' to do but
wash, an' cook, an' serve tea, an'-" A gust of laugh-
ter from her aunt interrupted the eloquent sarcasm.
"What's so funny 'bout it?" demanded Judy.
"Oh, shet up!” chuckled Mis' Liddy. “Come on an'
set down efn you's so tired.”
The truth was that Judy appeared as fresh as she had
been that morning. She flopped into a chair at the table.
“Here,” she said, placing a parcel before Martha. "Some
nice rice puddin' fo’ dessert. Ef you wants to give her
some”-she jerked her head in the general direction
of her aunt—“suit yo'self.”
“Look out, Marty,” warned Mis' Liddy, laughingly,
“she mought o' tried to pizen Mis' Smedley."
Judy wrinkled her nose disdainfully.
“Now, no foolin', you young heifer,” ordered Mis'
Liddy, "tell me how you likes yo' job. I know it ain't
hard 'cause I done worked fo' Mis' Smedley myself.”
“Oh, it's all right,” said Judy. “Tell you the truth I
wouldn't mind workin' fo’ her ef it was hard work,
'cause Mis' Smedley's real nice—an' that baby's cute's
he kin be."
"Well, Monday's hardest day on 'count o' washin',”
said Mis' Liddy. “But there ain't but three o' them to
cook fo'. Ten dollars a week an' board ain't bad. You
gits every Sunday afternoon off, too, an' every other
Thursday after breakfast. Huh! When I first come to
Philly, I got ten dollars a month—an’ was glad to git
it!”
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Mis' Liddy leaned back in her chair and started on
her reminiscences. When she got to her favorite passage,
"All I had time fo', seem like, was eat, sleep, an' work,”
Judy winked at Martha.
“I saw you wink!” Mis' Liddy exclaimed. “You thinks
I'm jokin', but it's the gospel truth! That's why I
skimped an' saved so's to have a li'l' somep'n laid up
fo' a rainy day. An' that's why I was able to git a part-
time job an' go to school at night so's to "
"Have some puddin', A'nt Liddy,” interrupted Judy,
and she shoved the bowl across the table.
Mis' Liddy caught the hint. “All right, drat you!"
she laughed. “Guess it ain't no use preachin' to you,
noways. You allus done what you wanted, even when
you was a li'l' un-an' you growed no better.”
"No, A'ntie,” was Judy's candid reply, "yo' niece
ain't believin' in no kind o work no time! Some o'
these days yo' niece ain't gonna do too much work,
neither-an' she ain't gonna be dead, neither!"
And, somehow, neither Mis' Liddy nor Martha
doubted her. There was a light in her eyes that told
of a spirit that usually got what it wanted.
“Nope,” she continued, “I can't see this housework,
an' never will. The first chance I gits to do somep'n eas-
ier fo’ bigger money—I'm gone! I jes' warn't made to
wait on nobody. I'm gonna have somebody wait on me
one o' these days!”
“An' lose yo' soul, tool" exploded Mis' Liddy.
“I mought," agreed Judy, slowly, as if pondering the
[244]


Chapter Thirty-two
HANKSGIVING came and went, Christmas
and New Year. Then one blustery February
day job-seekers who came to Mis' Liddy's
agency had a surprise. For the first time in
the-Lord-knew-when there was a sign hang-
ing at the door which read: “Closed Until Further No-
tice.” No amount of ringing at the bell brought a
response. And, since it was uncommonly cold, the dis-
appointed ones did not linger, but slushed on their
various ways through the stinging sleet.
The next day the sign had been removed. There was
an unusual brightness about Mis' Liddy's freckled face.
And the lusty wails of an infant sounded through the
back wall of the office.
Young Jimmy-Lew had come.
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IL
One week after the birth of Martha's son, Judy re-
ceived a letter which sent her rushing home. Her own
son was sick. When she returned, eight days later, she
was hollow-eyed and shrouded in black and her breath
reeked of whisky. She was sobbing out details of her
recent experience when her eye was caught by Jimmy-
Lew and she picked him up.
"He's mine, now, too!” she told Martha, almost
fiercely.
So from the very beginning Jimmy-Lew had two
women to spoil him.
“He'll be so dern sp’iled he'll be rotten," Mis' Liddy
warned Martha. But this sage advice was lost. Martha
was a young mother.
Martha was working now, as well as Judy. This left
Jimmy-Lew to the care of Mis' Liddy a great part of
the day, and that lady saw to it that her spare hours
were profitably spent in "unsp'ilin'” him. She had
some degree of success. But when night brought the
girls home, all disciplinary rules were tossed aside.
Jimmy-Lew grew rapidly into a sturdy, intelligent
child whose black eyes and chuckling laugh could cap-
tivate even Mis’ Liddy to the point of sparing the rod
on occasion. He knew better than to invade her office
during business hours, for several experiments in that
direction had brought painful results from Mis’ Liddy's
broad palm. But in the kitchen he could do much as
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he pleased, and he spent happy hours dissecting the
toys with which Martha and Judy provided him.
When he was three years old he asserted himself and
passed from the first to the second phase of male life.
This was when he objected to aprons.
“Wanna wear pants! Wanna wear pants!” he howled.
And not even Mis' Liddy could force his squirming
body into one of the objectionable feminine garments.
He wore pants after that, like the boys in the apart-
ment above Mis' Liddy's. And his fond women, seeing
him stand swayed back on his stout legs, hands in
pockets, and expectancy on his pinkish-brown face,
called him their "li'l' man.”
[248]


Chapter Thirty-three
HEN Jimmy-Lew was four, Martha
and Judy had their first chance be-
fore the footlights. For years they'd
danced and sung together in the
kitchen for Mis' Liddy's disinterested
and the baby's gleeful inspection. Now the Ruby Thea-
ter, a vaudeville house around the corner which they
frequented with Sam Jenkins and his friends, was hav-
ing an amateur prize program. Sam, who was a waiter
and Judy's beau and fancied himself a judge of the
dance, had persuaded them to do a number.
The Ruby was under the management of a genial,
florid Irishman, one Patsy O'Keefe by name. Patsy was
an old-timer to the boards. His oft-repeated assertion
was that he knew all the headliners among Negroes of
the theater—the Coleman brothers, who'd taken New
York by storm with their song-hits and musical com-
edies; their co-worker, Ross; and even the great black-
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face comedian, Bill Wilson. And, faith, since he'd come
to make his living among these people, his boast was
that he knew them better than they knew themselves.
He patronized their restaurants, their saloons, even
their bawd-houses.
On this evening—which was Thursday and the
domestics' night off—Patsy strutted from the wings and
doffed his brown derby, baring a bald dome of a head
as he waved the eager audience to silence.
“Lad-eeez an' gen’man,” he began, importantly.
There was a round of applause, punctuated by whis-
tles. "The management is anxious to uncover new talent
that must be among so large an' enthusiastic an audi-
ence. So we have set aside cash prizes from the box-office
to reward the winnahs—who will be picked by you-
an' you—an' you.” Here Patsy pointed dramatically to
different sections of the theater.
After the hand-clapping had died down, Patsy fin-
ished his speech: "An' now, will the contestants come
up to the stage an' pick for the order of their appear-
ance in the contest? Come one! Come all! Strike up
the band!”
The ill-trained orchestra blared forth, and to Patsy's
coaxing the ambitious ones straggled shyly to the stage
to receive a hearty handclasp from the manager and
cheers from the audience.
"Let's go-huh?” whispered Judy to Martha. They
were seated in the middle section of the orchestra.
“Bet you ain't got nerve ’nuf!” jibed Sam.
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“Dare you," chimed in his friend, who had escorted
Martha.
Martha rose abruptly and moved toward the aisle.
“Hey_wait a minute—I'm coming," called Judy.
The orchestra finished its number and Patsy mo-
tioned the ten contestants to him with the request that
they draw slips of paper from his derby. Judy drew
fourth position.
Now Patsy pushed them off to the wings to wait their
turns.
Maggie Hanks was the first to perform. She waddled
out to the front of the stage, a huge ungainly figure
whose rolls of fat rebelled at the confining services of
cloth and stays. But she had not sung more than half
a dozen bars of "The Curse of an Aching Heart" when
catcalls and whistles drowned her screech.
“Git the hook! Git the hook!"
A huge hook attached to a stout pole shot from the
wings and poor Maggie was hauled ignominiously out
of earshot of her ungrateful public.
Judy was the only contestant who had the temerity
to laugh at this episode. Martha and the other aspirants
for honors found themselves suddenly very weak in the
knees.
Next came an elocutionist, a timid-appearing youth
who looked as if he had just donned long trousers. He
managed to stumble through “The Face on the Bar-
room Floor" despite torrents of perspiration which
poured off his closely sheared head and seriously threat-
ened a celluloid collar bearing a diminutive black bow
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tie. But unfortunately he ended upon a too-dramatic
note. When the vagabond of the piece succumbed
finally to alcohol and exposure, the young reader suited
actions to words, and pitched himself onto the stage.
Alas! His trousers were meant for gentler motions, and
the seams gave in various humiliating places. To the
accompaniment of delighted howls from the audience,
the hapless one escaped to secluded regions, and with
him went the skinny girl who had drawn third place.
"Here we go!" said Judy to Martha. Patsy had just
introduced them as "two charmin' young exponents of
the song an' dance."
“Come on. You ain't scared, is you?” urged the im-
patient Judy.
“Y-y-y-yes!" Martha fumbled with her handkerchief
and looked at Judy with frightened eyes.
“Aw-fo’git it!" and Judy almost dragged Martha
on-stage.
The orchestra, at Judy's direction, swung into the
number the girls had sung their first night at Mis’
Liddy's. They knew it well. So did the orchestra. This
was their kind of music! Soon Martha forgot her ner-
vousness and her husky alto joined Judy's vivacious
soprano. Seized by the rhythm of a tune familiar to
them, the audience began to hum, and feet all over the
house took up the beat.
But it was when Judy caught Martha's hand and they
glided into their dance that the enthusiasm of the
audience reached its height. They began with an easy
shuffle, the beat of their feet being as the whisk of a
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broom across a floor in measured time. Then the taps
became more intricate and pronounced. From two-four
time they shifted to a triple beat, followed by four and
five taps of heel and toe to the musical bar. Each tap
was brought out with precision and clearness.
“Aw, knock them boards, gals!” and “G’on, now!"
could be heard from all sections of the house.
There was nothing extraordinary about the girls' rou-
tine. They had acquired a few of the regular steps
known to all tap-dancers. But their performance was a
miracle of coöperation—it was as if one brain dictated
every movement of the two lithe bodies.
As they took their hurried, breathless bows and scam-
pered off-stage, the house broke into a roar. For this
crowd knew good tap-dancing when they saw it.
“We got it, gall” said Judy, jubilantly.
Martha nodded, her eyes shining
Later Patsy came up to congratulate them, and stayed
to talk. "Say,” he said, after surveying them critically,
"you two ain't bad-lookin', neither! How'd ye like a
job in a show?"
“Show!” gasped Martha.
Judy arched her brows at Patsy, and then turned
half-closed eyes on her partner. “ 'Course he said show,
honey_don't you think we's good enough? You thinks
so, don't you, Mister Patsy?” Her accents dripped syrup.
Patsy's eyes narrowed speculatively and he grinned.
"Shure now an' we kin talk it over sometime. ..."
“Tonight-after the show?" Judy asked insinuatingly.
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When Patsy had returned to his duties Martha de-
manded, sharply:
“What you goin' to do, Judy?”
“Git us jobs in a show," was the laconic answer.
“But you knows what he wants.”
"Baby," interrupted Judy, “I knows jes' what he
wants!” She faced Martha with that crooked smile of
hers. “Listen—ef you thinks I'm gonna sling vittals an’
wash an' scrub all my life, you's crazy! You mought
think you's made fo' that, an' you kin have it, ef you
wants to. Me? I'm tired of it!"
II
About four o'clock in the morning, after a disgruntled
Sam had taken her home, Martha bolted from bed and
stole into the kitchen. Judy was fumbling at the back
door.
"Sh-sh!" cautioned Martha as Judy came reeling in.
“Don't wake up Jimmy. An' fo' God's sake don't let
Mis' Liddy hear you!"
“Wha' I care 'bout A’nt Liddy? Wha' I care?” Judy
grinned drunkenly and waved a hand in a broad gesture
of disdain. “You's in a show, gal! Hic! In a show!" And
she immediately fell dead asleep in the chair where
Martha had placed her.
This was fortunate, for Martha had no trouble in
getting the girl to bed. At six o'clock she began to apply ·
restoratives. A towel soaked with water made icy by the
biting October cold brought a muffled howl from the
sleeper.
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"Sh-sh-sh, you fooll” whispered Martha, and pointed
to Mis' Liddy's door. This effectively sobered Judy and
she sat up, blinking.
“What'd you do last night?” Martha demanded,
sternly.
Judy's grin was sickly but triumphant. “Got us jobs
in a show an' told Patsy what a nice man he was.” She
swayed languidly to the kitchen, her cotton kimono
caught tightly about her waist so that the curving line
of her hip was more prominent.
"But, Judy, you hadn't ought to done that,” protested
Martha, following her.
“Done what, honey?”.
“You know!" snapped Martha, irritated.
“Oh, you mean that? Don't worry none, honey. Li'l
Judy kin take care o herself, an' don't you fo’git it!
'Sides,” she added, spluttering over the washbowl, “I
don't ever pay fo' nothin' 'twell I gits it-ef I pays
then?” And she winked solemnly.
Martha brightened. “Well, when do we git the jobs?".
“You know this Sol Batey we been readin' 'bout, the
one that puts on all these colored shows? Well, he's
gonna open in Philly next week fo' a try-out. Patsy says
he been knowin' him—fact is, they's friends. So Patsy
says he's gonna see that Sol puts a spot in fo' our dance.”
“Wonder what Mis' Liddy'll say?" speculated Mar-
tha, uneasily.
Judy's shrug was indifferent. “We's both grown, ain't
we?"
"An' then there's Jimmy-Lew, too,” continued Mar-
tha. “I can't leave him.”
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“Oh, you kin leave him with Aʼnt Liddy,” said Judy,
confidently. "She'll take care o' him, all right. He ain't
no baby now.”
“Maybe so. ..." Martha's voice was doubtful.
Martha was silent most of the way to the trolley line.
“Aw, come on," urged Judy, "we ain't gone yit. Ef I
kin grin with this headache I got, you ought to be able
to laugh out loud."
“I know," said Martha, “but I can't leave 'im—I
can't! He's too young."
Suddenly Judy had an idea.
“I got it! Martha, you ain't been home in a time.
Whyn't you go home an' take Jimmy-Lew to see yo'
folks? You kin leave 'im down on the farm-be better
fo’ 'im, too. City ain't no place to raise chilluns, no-
how."
Home! Martha turned to Judy, suddenly radiant.
Blanche-Papa-Big George-Josh-the farm—the
pine wood. All these had faded from her somehow.
She'd had so many other things to think about.
“Maybe so!” she answered. “But what'll I tell 'em,
Judy?"
"Tell 'em the truth. You's yo' own woman now."
And Judy waved a blithe hand as the girls separated.
III
Mis' Liddy met them at the door.
“Now don't you git all up in the air, gal,” she said,
hastily, to Martha. “Jimmy-Lew's sick. He ain't sick
[256]


Chapter Thirty-four
HE war, that began so inauspiciously with
the assassination of an Austrian nobleman,
reached across the seas and stirred the slug-
gish stream of American industry.
A number of the girls Martha knew quit
their jobs. There was better money to be made in the
munitions factories. But Martha stayed with the Spear-
mans. She liked it there well enough with fluttery Mrs.
Spearman and her viking stockbroker husband who was
confident that some day he would put across a really
big deal and retire. In any case, the only other job she
wanted was on the stage.
Mrs. Spearman, apparently, was worried lest the pre-
vailing fever of unrest rob her of a good maid, for one
day when she gave Martha her pay she added an extra
bill.
"I just wanted to tell you,” she said in her nervous,
hesitant manner, "that you've been very satisfactory and
that I wouldn't like to lose you. The children have be-
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come so attached to you. And Mr. Spearman praises
your cooking all the time. He suggested that I raise
your wages—if you decide to stay with us—beginning
this week.”
“But, Mrs. Spearman,” Martha began. She had
never expected this.
“Now, I hope you're not going to tell me that you
were thinking of leaving, Martha,” Mrs. Spearman in-
terrupted, hastily. "You see, I–I don't like hiring new
girls. It upsets me so. Really, if the two dollars isn't
enough, I'll see that your salary is advanced right along
with salaries in general. I do hope you'll stay!"
Martha decided that it was the part of wisdom to
encourage Mrs. Spearman in her generous humor. So
she said cautiously, "Well, Mrs. Spearman, I'm satisfied
-if I'm giving good service and you are going to give
me more wages.” That, she felt, left the matter open
for further adjustment.
me
So Martha remained with the Spearmans. And
Jimmy-Lew grew out of babyhood. And the war came
closer.
For a long time nothing of importance happened.
Then Judy paid a comet visit homema Judy who was
a genuine trouper, a stylish Judy who wore diamonds
she explained with a knowing wink, a Judy who talked
in an unintelligible lingo of the theater and the gay
places that made up her world.
in an unin made up ^
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Jimmy-Lew's shoulders flinched upwards—not in
fear, but in anger at this unprecedented interruption.
“Comp’ny—aaa—teez!” he hissed, then wheeled
slowly to face the cause of the interruption.
Hardened campaigner that he was, Jimmy-Lew was
guilty this once of knowing awe. He'd seen colored
soldiers—heaps of 'em-but this resplendently booted,
spurred, braided, and chevroned figure was too much
even for the field marshall His eyes grew round with
amazement and he returned the newcomer's snappy
salute in a daze.
“Attention!” the man barked.
From the field marshal down to the lowest buck pri-
vate, little Amos, brother of Isaiah, there was a stiffen-
ing of spines, while roughly-fashioned wooden guns
clicked smartly against clamped heels.
"Shoulder-arms!"
The voice acted as a galvanic current; there was an
immediate commotion as boyish arms and legs sought
to respond. But the action was ragged.
“Halt!"
To the relieved surprise of the company and its com-
mander, the face of their self-appointed officer lost its
sternness and the man broke into a howl of laughter.
Discipline took sudden wings.
"Who showed you kids how to shoulder arms?” he
asked, when he could get his breath.
"I did. Why?" Jimmy's voice bristled. His lips shot
out in an ugly pout. The generalissimo did not relish
ridicule or criticism.
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“Here we are," announced Carlton at last.
They stood before a three-story red-brick house, flat-
roofed. Similar houses lined both sides of the street.
At the top of the broad marble steps, John swept low
before Martha in an exaggerated bow.
“Welcome to the ancestral hall, fair lady!”
To his delight, Martha executed a demure curtsy
and tripped mincingly over the door sill.
He led the way up carpeted stairs to a door opening
off a balcony; knocked and a faint voice answered.
Inside the room near a window a patch of white topped
the back of a rocker that swayed ever so gently.
"That you, son?” The query was low-pitched, but
firm, and the voice struck pleasantly on Martha's ears.
"Who's that with you?”
"I've brought a friend of Mis' Liddy's to see you,
Mom," answered her son, cheerfully. “Wait until I
turn your chair around.” He did so carefully.
"Well-how do you like her?” he asked, stepping to
Martha's side.
Martha felt the patient eyes upon her, but did not
mind. They were friendly, in keeping with the whole
of the calm brown face. She saw the lips part in a smile
of welcome, while wistfulness settled on the broad fea-
tures. A faint nod of approval ended the brief scrutiny.
"She's real purty,” said the mother. “What's yo' name,
chile? You 'mind me o' my Nina now, sho 'nuf. Don't
she, son?"
“Her name's Martha, Moms-Martha Prince—and
she lives over with Mis' Liddy Williams.”
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tha's interest. "Jes' like her picter, she was allus laffin'
an' ready fo' a good time. Come day, go day." The old
lady sighed and finished half to herself: “That's why
she's in her grave today, I reckon. Take after her pappy's
brother, Jethro_reg'lar ladies' man, he was—gamblin'
an' drinkin' his life 'way.” She seemed to have forgotten
her listener. “Ain't none o' us left now 'cep’n Johnny
and me, an' now he's tryin' to keep from tellin' me
he's got to go fight in this war."
"You knows that?" exlaimed Martha before she could
check herself.
The old woman bent her wise, maternal eyes upon
the younger woman and nodded.
“ 'Course I knows, chile. A mammy allus knows 'bout
her chilluns! An' me here par’lized with nobody to be
with me cep'n a girl I hires with the money my man
left me.” For the first time she grew impatient. “Money!
Hadn't been fo' money my Nina mought still be livin'.
She wouldn't o' had no time to go foolin' 'round ef
she'd o' had to work. An' ef it warn't fo' that money,
my son wouldn't have to go to no war. He'd have to
stay here an' take care o' his mammy. I prays the Lawd'll
let 'im come back, honey. But it don't seem like a man's
got much chance, the way they fights nowadays. Well-
the Lawd gives an' the Lawd takes away. Jes' hope, ef
you ever has a son, he don't have to go to no war."
“Who's that talking about war?" demanded Johnny
from the doorway.
“Yo' mother an' me was just talkin' 'bout yo' goin'
to war,” said Martha. Seeing John's face fall, she con-
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When the last “I ain't got long to stay yere” had faded
into the shadows of the room, Johnny turned to face
her.
"What's the matter?” asked Martha, not quite sure
of the meaning of his expression. “Do I get a court-
martial?"
"It was lovely, honey—” began Mrs. Carlton, but
Johnny interrupted.
“My God, girl! Do you know what you're doing?
You're throwing away a voice! You're hiding a candle
under a bushell You're committing sin every day, keep-
ing that voice to yourself! Why—the whole world ought
to hear it!"
Martha laughed, partly from pleasure, partly from
incredulity.
“Don't laugh!"
“Now, Johnny, don't take on so," said his mother.
"Don't you mind him, honey,” she said to Martha. "He
allus liked music—wanted to take it up, but his pappy's
wish was he'd be a lawyer or a doctor."
“Oh, I don't mind,” said Martha.
“But you should mind about a voice like yours,"
persisted Johnny. And he worried the subject through
supper until Mrs. Carlton shooed the two of them out
of the house for a walk in the park.
III
Martha was on her knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor
and feeling that nothing was worth while because noth-
ing could matter any more. It is easy to feel that way
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when you've tried to slice half your finger off first thing
in the morning, and you've burnt the toast to a crisp,
and you've answered a commanding buzzer more times
than you can count, and you've faced a fretful woman
at her bedside with a trayful of food which she declares
is unfit for a pig, and you've got two quarelling girls
off to school, and the night before you've loved your
man for the last time in a don't-know-how-long. For
Johnny's leave was over and he was off to France.
“Martha! Martha!”
Martha flinched at the impatience in the voice, but
did not lift her head. “Ma'am?" she answered, dully.
Fussy, fluttery Mrs. Spearman stood in the doorway.
“Martha, when are you going to finish that floor?
Have you forgotten I'm entertaining the Volunteer
Patriot Workers this afternoon at tea? I don't know
what's come over you today. I - "
She got no further, for Martha had risen, and the
expression on her face suggested that she had put on a
mask. All the girl's gentleness and smiling good humor
had fled.
“Gimme my pay!” It was a hoarse whisper. “You
hear me? Gimme my pay!”
"Why, Martha - "
"Gimme my pay, I said. I don't want to hear nothin'.
Just gimme my pay." The voice was dull and flat and
implacable.
"What is the matter?".
“Sick an' tired o' scrubbin' an' cookin' an' washin'.
Sick an' tired o' waitin' on folks all day. Sick an' tired!
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Every day somep’n's wrong.” Martha spoke as if she
had given long thought to her grievances. Actually, she
had never considered them before. “Ef it ain't this, it's
that. The clothes ain't clean after I wash 'em. The eggs
ain't fried right. The livin' room ain't been dusted.
I ain't never gonna work in no service no mo'. Gimme
my money.”
When Mrs. Spearman returned with a hastily scrib-
bled check, Martha was huddled over the table, sob-
bing hysterically.
Mrs. Spearman nodded her head knowingly. Nerves!
"Listen, Martha,” she said, “suppose we forget all
that's happened.”
But Martha had gone too far to retreat. "Gimme my
money." Then she reached her hat down from its peg
and walked out.
IV
So eight years after she had left home, Martha re-
turned, to find her father older, Blanche larger in girth
and more mature. Ike had been drafted into the war,
but there were his two boys, Booker and Paul, who
were just the right age for Jimmy-Lew.
It was fun coming home to people who loved you,
but when two weeks had passed, Martha knew that she
could not stay here. In two weeks all experiences had
been exchanged. She knew which seasons had been fat
for her father, which lean. She had a report of the
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deaths and marriages, the current and stale gossip of
the town. There was nothing more to be discovered.
Consequently, when a letter arrived from Judy,
Martha was prepared with an answer.
"Why don't you come to New York?” Judy wrote.
“I can get you a job in the show I'm going to be in
this fall. ..."
Martha had had a taste of freedom and a wider life.
She wanted more. Jimmy-Lew could stay here and grow
up on the farm. So, just as suddenly as she had re-
turned, Martha went away again.
(274)


Chapter Thirty-six
THEN he first came to his grand-
father's, Jimmy-Lew enjoyed the
prestige of a guest. His cousins treated
him with deference and listened
breathlessly to tales of his life in the
city_tales highly spiced with imagination. Even his
grandfather and aunt gave him a certain special con-
sideration. Jimmy-Lew was still cock-o'-the-walk.
With the departure of his mother, however, he be-
came a permanent member of the family. Booker and
Paul, growing more familiar, accepted him now as an
equal rather than a superior. Jimmy-Lew was no longer
a being from a wonder-world, but their cousin. And
Jimmy-Lew did not like this shrunken interest.
An incident occurred to fix his status very firmly.
It was a hot, sultry morning after a hot, sultry night.
Paul was already up and at his chores in the chicken-
yard. But Booker and Jimmy-Lew~laggards always—
were trying to snatch an extra ten winks of sleep.
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Miss Winston, the teacher, could intervene. Booker
sprang away from the seat, and retired to watch the
fray at a safe distance. The room was in an uproar.
“Ellen! Jimmy!" shrieked Miss Winston.
“He kept botherin' mel" sobbed Ellen, scowling at
her late hero, who stood beside his cousin and sheep-
ishly wiped his bleeding face with his shirt sleeve;
Jimmy-Lew, who could lick the spots off'n any boy his
size!
"What have you to say for yourself, young man?"
demanded Miss Winston, as severely as she could. For
this was the principal's nephew.
"He hasn't anything to say!" It was Miss Warner, as-
sistant principal, a woman of adamantine qualities. She
didn't care whose nephew Jimmy-Lew was! And Jimmy-
Lew, seeing her frowning mahogany countenance, had
an excusable qualm. "I saw it all, Miss Winston. This
young fellow thinks he can do as he pleases around
here. But, believe me, he can't. Come here, young man!”
On the platform, where the two teachers' desks stood
like thrones in an audience chamber, Jimmy-Lew felt
the stings of a willow branch vigorously applied. To the
disappointment of the other pupils, not a cry escaped
him. When Miss Warner stopped at last, he stood there
like a carven image, his black eyes dull spots of slate
beneath sweaty curls, his lips a thin taut line. .
It was the first time Miss Warner had met with re-
sponse of this sort. What kind of a boy was it who re-
fused to be beaten into submission? She was annoyed,
and at the same time immensely intrigued. That night
[279)


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IV
Six years went by on the farm, and they were good
years for all three boys. At the end of that time, each
one gave clear indication of the mold he would take
in maturity. Jimmy-Lew was brilliant, mercurial, quick
of temper, good-looking. Above a stubborn chin and
willful lips his nose was losing its youthful snubness for
the aquiline curves that were Lew Grundy's. Paul was
like his father, serious and scholarly and more poised
and sagacious at twelve than either Jimmy-Lew or
Booker. It was always Paul who at the end of the week
had a remnant left of his twenty-five-cent allowance.
Booker for his part held only a forced toleration for
the stuff contained in books. He had the kind of mother
wit that coins quips and catchy sayings, and this gift
was enhanced by a lazy drawling voice and a slow white
smile that would break across the ginger brown of his
square-cut face. Booker belonged to the earth and the
earth would hold him. Every movement of his powerful
young body attested this fact.
The war was long since over and Ike Johnson was
back among his beloved books when Martha sent for
Jimmy-Lew. She could afford to have him with her now,
for she had prospered. The Negro weekly journals car.
ried full-length semi-nude pictures of the new song-and-
dance team of Judy and Marty—the Maryland Song-
Birds And all Shrewsbury was agog at the dazzling rise
to stage fame of Jim Prince's younger daughter.
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you?" But when her father only roared the louder, her
eyes filled with tears and she fled to the station house.
To his own surprise, Jimmy-Lew ran after her. It
was the first time. And when he had cornered her he
could think of nothing adequate to say. A desire to
comfort her stirred him vaguely, but he would not for
worlds be soft.
"Aw, what you cryin' 'bout?” he managed, finally.
"Don't be such a baby!"
Where was his customary gruffness? In spite of him-
self, the edge was gone from his voice. Ellen leaned
against him and gave way to her grief and humiliation.
“I s-stayed up late last night to make you a cake-
an' Paw h-he makes fun of it-an' you don't like it,
an' now Booker an' Paul'll tell all the rest the boys an'
girls-an'— Oh, I wish I was dead!"
Jimmy-Lew's hand went up in an awkward, sheepish
gesture and patted her shoulder. There was a mournful
howl from the approaching train. Then, as they sep-
arated, the girl reached sudden lips to the boy's. A
clumsy, hasty caress, but it widened the boy's dark eyes
and set him tingling. A door had opened a crack to a
new avenue of experience.
"Hey, Jimmy-Lew!" Booker stood grinning at them,
impish glee stamped on his face. He'd seen! .
Jimmy-Lew made a belligerent move toward the tor-
mentor but Blanche interrupted.
“Come on, Jimmy-Lew! Don't fogit to change where
I told you—an' keep a watch out fo' yo' mother when
you git to the station in New York.” She pulled him
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after her, talking above her usual calm. "I told the
conductor to mind out fo' you. Be a good boy, now. An'
don't fo’git to write. Here's yo' suitcase. Tell Marty
I'll send yo’ things by parcel post.”
Then they were waving to him from the station shed
and the train was puffing under him, gathering speed.
His throat closed unpleasantly as the familiar green low-
lands slid behind him.
[ 285]


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“Now! Watch that boy on this end if you want to
see some running. It's a pass.”
“Pass?” scoffed the other. “How in the devil's a prep-
school kid going to throw that wet ball? It's hard to find
a guy doing that in the Big Ten. ... My Gawd!”
His exclamation stopped conversation for the time
being.
A big Hebrew lad had whipped the ball to the ban-
tam quarterback. There was a clash of young bodies
meeting and locking. Even from the stands one could
see the white teeth of the quarterback as he crept back
slowly, sure-footedly, like a wary cat at bay. He had no
nerves. The charging line of Holbrook fought desper-
ately to break through his blocking team-mates, while
their backfield spread in a four-pointed fan to protect
the territory assigned to it.
Tony was on his goal line now. There was no more
time to lose. He knew where to throw. There was a
spot thirty yards away. . . . His arm went back, then
snapped forward. The ball bulleted in a high arc over
the tangled bodies in front of him. Then he went down,
and a wild roar rolled over the field.
Elusive as a buck deer, the bronzed giant on the end
had slipped through the scramble at the scrimmage line.
Without so much as a backward glance he sped a
straight course down the middle of the field, a Hol-
brook backfield man at his heels. The time-keeper's
gun barked, and as if this were a signal, the runner
peered over his shoulder. The ball was about to pass
above his head!
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With a leap that did not break his long, rhythmical
stride, he reached out and clutched the oval in the long
fingers of his right hand, juggled it a moment, then
tucked it in the crook of his arm and continued on his
weaving way. Ten ... twenty ... thirty ... forty ...
fifty ... sixty ... The chalked stripes fled behind him.
But his pursuer would not be shaken; in a final lunge
he flung his tired body into space and his arms encir-
cled the waist of the ball-carrier. But it was too late.
Bending forward, and with his legs churning the
ground, the bronze boy dragged his tackler over the
final line. Then both collapsed in a puddle of mud.
Over the tumult of spectators swarming the field,
the man at Hanlon's side yelled:
“Say! Who is that Indian-looking kid? I'll get him a
scholarship to -
"Save your breath, Whitby," advised the coach. "He's
colored, and he's going to some college down South-
in Maryland, I think he said.”
“But he don't wanta go there, man! Why, I'll fix it
so he won't have to worry about anything! Boy! Can he
step! Does he go in for anything else?"
They were making for the locker-rooms.
"Yeah-yeah," answered Jock, wearily, "he's one of
the best guards I've seen on a basketball court in many
a year. But it's track and football that're his main inter-
ests. Runs all the dashes, and pretty good broad jumper,
too. But you're wasting your time, Whitby. I tell you
this kid's dead set on going South to college. Has some
[288]


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crazy notion about working with his people. Good stu-
dent, too. Graduates this spring."
“Boy-o-boy! Is he a find! Wait'll I talk to him.”
“Yeah-wait!”
The Staunton dressing-room was a hubbub, with
everyone talking above the noise of showers. And per-
meating it all was the odor of young sweating bodies.
The Negro boy stood apart from the others a great-
shouldered lean-flanked figure in bronze, toweling his
almost hairless skin to a reddish glow.
“Atta boy, Jimmy!” “Great goin', kid!” “Swell catch,
boy!” Compliments showered on him as one, then an-
other, passed by.
The swarthy little quarterback came up to him,
stopped, and broke suddenly into a torrent of speech
punctuated by Latin gesticulations. Without a word
the big bronze boy picked him up under one arm and
started to walk off. “Hey, Nick,” he called to a black-
haired linesman, “turn on that cold shower."
"Wait—wait a minute, Jimmy!” howled the Italian.
“Nick! Don't turn it on! Aw, ya big bullies—takin'
'vantage of a little guy! I'll tell me big brother!"
The room filled with great gusts of heartless laughter,
and poor Tony had no rescuer. Jimmy-Lew ruthlessly
shoved his captive under the icy water and held him
there. Tony, however, was not to be subdued. When
he was free and rubbing his chilled body briskly with
a rough towel, he persisted doggedly, “Just the same, it
was a helluva catch!”
"Well, you threw it, didncha?" answered Jimmy.
[289]


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“S'posin' it'd been intercepted? Good thing it's the last
game-coach'd give you hell!”
“Here he comes now," whispered Tony. “He don't
look so hot, either."
The coach came up with Whitby.
“Sarnocco! What'd I tell you about passing in your
own territory? Think you're smart, don't you?" Han-
lon's gray eyes bore into his prize quarterback, then
turned on Jimmy-Lew. “Fine catch there, Prince.
Didn't think you could make itbut you did. I don't
like such chances, but— Well, the game's won and it
took nerve. We still have basketball and track ahead,
though, so you two see that you stay in training. I know
I don't have to tell you, Prince. But--no wine, Tony!"
An aggrieved expression came over Tony's face ."Aw,
coach—Tony, he don't drink-a ..."
"Yeah? Not-a much-al" mocked Hanlon. He motioned
to his companion. “Fellows, this is Bill Whitby, from
the mid-West. He's here scouting for material. Might
mean a chance for scholarships."
“How're ya?” The scout gave each a professionally
warm handshake, talking rapidly all the while. “Great
game! Great pass, Tony-and a fine catch, Prince.
Heard a lot about you two. You both ought to go great
out our way. How'd you like to go to State in the fall?
Fix it so you'd get scholarships and nice jobs on the
side. No proselyting, understand. Just a big alumnus
has established a scholarship fund for good athletes
same as they have for good students. ... What say?”
He looked expectantly from one to the other.
[ 290]


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“That's on the level?" asked Tony, all eagerness.
“Sure! Sure, boy! Here.” Whitby pulled a sheaf of
papers from his inside coat pocket. “Here y'are-look
'em over. How about you, Prince?"
"Nope.” Jimmy's voice was as final as it was soft.
Whitby opened his mouth, but changed his mind.
“Aw, come on, Jimmy," put in Tony. “It's a great
chance.”
“I said no." Jimmy's voice was impatient as he bent
to lace his shoes. "I told you I was going back to
Maryland to college. I'm going to be a teacher, and I
want to know something about my people down there.
Besides, I don't need any scholarship.”
Coach Hanlon nudged Whitby and the two walked
off together.
"No use," said Hanlon. “Just like I told you. You're
not the only one. Plenty colleges right here in the East
have been angling for him. But he always gives the same
answer. Seems as if he has an uncle teaching down there
in Maryland somewhere. Wants to follow in his foot-
steps. In a way, I think he's right. Don't really need a
scholarship, either. His mother's this singer and dancer,
Marty Prince.”
"Oh yeah?" exclaimed Whitby. "Say, she's good! And
some looker! Saw her in Chicago. And did the Johnnies
go for her!”
"Yeah, I know. But don't ever let him hear you
talking about her! One of the kids came into the gym
one day last year when she was playing the Capitol with
that big colored band. He started raving about her
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These Low Grounds
“Ha—Toneel" the elder Sarnocco cried. “I hear you
ween-a da champeenship-no? Good-a boy!” Catching
Dave and Jimmy-Lew by the hands, he beamed in turn
on them. “Ha—Jeemee an' Daveel Good-a boys! I tell
Mike Senici—I tell heem, I say: 'Mike, your bambino's
team, she no beat-a my bambino's team!’ An' wotta you
t'ink? I ween-a da five dollars from Mike on da game!
Hal” And he flourished the green-back triumphantly.
“Atta boy, Pop! Where's Mom?"
“Ma-ma? She's in da back. I tell her to make da nize,
beeg-a pot da spaghett-weeth a lotta hot sausage! I
tell her, I say: 'Tonee he bring-a Jeemee an' Davee
home for sup'' Hal We celebrate--no?”.
The Sarnocco kitchen back of the store was spotlessly
clean, and smelled deliciously of spaghetti. Stout, cheery
Mrs. Sarnocco sat at one end of the table opposite her
husband and near the gas-range, where she could
promptly replenish any dish that ran low. On either
side of the table, distributed between the guests and
Tony, were pretty olive-skinned Angelina and the three
younger Sarnoccos—Maria, Rosa, and Peter, who
ranged in age from three to eight.
Jimmy-Lew had a comfortable sense of well-being as
he sat, silent for the most part, amid the clatter of voices
and silverware, for at the Sarnoccos' eating did not in-
terfere with talk and everyone talked at once. These
dinners were a custom after every athletic victory, and
a relief from the apartment on 141st Street where Judy
and his mother were endlessly entertaining a lot of
chattering stage people. At the Sarnoccos' Jimmy-Lew
[293]


Chapter Thirty-eight
URN out that damn light!"
Martha giggled as Judy sat up in bed and
scowled. Her reddish hair, lighter now than
formerly (thanks to a bleaching agent),
was a disheveled mass. Her lips, still rouged
from the night before, curled in their old way. She was
as angry as a disturbed setting hen.
“That's the sun,” Martha informed her.
"Yeah? Well turn it out! What you doing up so
early? Your old flame must be righteous. What'd he
have to say?"
"Wouldn't you like to know! What'd you do show
the 'fay the spots?”
“Yeah." Judy crawled unwillingly from under the
covers and sat on the side of the bed. She held her head
and groaned.
"O000-wotta man! Tried to drink all the lush in
Harlem. And every dive we went in he kept talkin'
[296]


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about how he liked up-town, and the laughing jigs,
and— Aw, he made me sick! Come to find out, he's
a shoe salesman. And me thinkin' i'd hooked a big-
timer! Spends his dough, though. . . . C'mon, break
down! What'd the sweet man have to say?"
"He's coming around this afternoon.”
“Oh-ho! So that's why you're up so bright and early!
Don't blame you much, gal—I could go for him myself.
Looks kind o prosperous.”
“Anybody with any brains has dough nowdays."
“Everybody but us! I swear, I don't know where the
money goes. Do you?"
“Easy come, easy go," shrugged Martha. "What're
you kickin' about? Ain't we still in the money?" .
“Yeah. But sometimes I get to thinkin' ..."
"Oh, well ... I wish Jimmy'd be a doctor, though,
'stead of a teacher. They make all the money, from the
looks of the cars they ride around in.”
“Humph!" Judy lit a cigarette and made for the hall.
After breakfast, she suggested a pick-me-up.
"Ought to be some o' that bad gin o' Mike's in the
living-room,” Martha said. “Let's see. I could stand a
shot myself.”
The living-room, like the rest of the apartment, spoke
of an easy-going, careless existence. It was large enough
to hold the necessary furniture and no larger: a divan,
several easy chairs, a radio, an upright piano bearing
autographed photographs of stage and screen celebrities.
The place was not shabby, but liquor stains and ciga-
rette burns bore witness to hard usage.
[297]


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“Hope none of the bunch come bustin' around to
day,” said Judy from the comfortable depths of a chair.
"Seems like they can't find no other place to go when
there ain't no rehearsal.”
"Maybe the rain'll keep 'em away,” suggested Martha.
She was curled on the divan, looking very small and
childish in her blue pajamas. For at thirty-three Jim
Prince's younger daughter still had something of the
sprite in her. Success in a career that is hard on youth
had not robbed her of her little-girlishness. She was
more knowing than the child who hung herself on her
father's fence, but there were freshness and softness in
her beauty still. Not like Judy. Judy was all hard
sophistication touched with satirical humor. It was the
explanation of their comet-rise to public favor. Martha
-slim, feminine, wide-eyed, graceful in silver or jade
green—was one thing in entertainment. Judy-play-
ing the male in tails and high hat, with a cigarette
drooping from her mouth and a so-tired-of-it-all expres-
sion on her face—was something quite different. To
gether they were everything. They were "tops."
Judy was opening the mail. "Here's a letter from
A'nt Liddy,” she said, and started reading aloud:
“MY DEAR NIECE, I take my pen in hand to write
these few lines to you and Marty. I hope they will
find you well. You write so little to your old aunt
I have to learn about you from the papers. I see
you and Marty are still doing all right. I hope you
are saving your money because times are not going
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“How'd you like to stay right here?"
Martha's eyes were half cloaked as she raised them to
his. And he smiled. It made him look incredibly young.
II
Jimmy-Lew accepted the new lodger without com-
ment. In a way it was a relief to have a man about the
apartment, some one older who took him and his prob-
lems seriously. As the months passed, a warm friendship
sprang up between the boy and and his mother's lover.
He was not deceived about Carlton's position in the
household. A magnificent diamond which Carlton gave
Martha for Christmas, Martha's concern when Carlton
suffered his chronic bronchial trouble during damp
weather, the note of affection which underlay their sim-
plest gestures toward each other—these and countless
other signs gave them away. But Jimmy-Lew found
nothing to condemn in the relationship. Carlton was a
person of genuinely fine quality, and the influence he
exercised over Martha was wholly beneficial.
Martha was drinking and smoking less and taking
more time for rest. As a consequence, a certain nervous-
ness disappeared from her manner and a zest returned
to her work. She was no longer bothered by a cough
which kept her periodically under doctor's orders. Even
the Chatter and the Harlem News, in their gossip
columns, found it worth while to comment upon the
new liveliness that had been injected into the routine
[ 302]


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of the Maryland Song-Birds. Particularly, they found
much to praise in Marty's torch-song numbers.
For Jimmy-Lew, the peak of his senior year at high
school was reached the week before Easter when he re-
turned from the Penn Relays bearing proudly a gold
disc with the figures of four runners in bas-relief.
Spurred on by Carlton to make some unusual gesture
in celebration of the victory, everyone went to church
Easter morning— Judy protesting until the last minute
that she would do no such thing ... what did they
think she was? . . . she needed sleep more than she
needed religion ... and further remarks to the same
effect. But go she did.
Never had there been a lovelier Easter Sunday. Never
had Harlem's three main avenues presented such a pic-
turesque riot of color. Times were good, everyone was
in money and disposed to spend it on finery—whether
it was finery bought on 125th Street or finery bought
downtown, it was finery just the same—and Easter was
the traditional time to show it off. Laborers and do-
mestics, stage folk and bootleggers, students and colored
"quality" poured into the churches of their choice,
emptied their pockets into the collection-boxes in re-
turn for the best religious show of the year, then drifted
out and home, satisfied that the time had been, if not
profitable, at least well spent.
Martha and Judy-still protesting at the unwarranted
exertion-got dinner. Carlton and Jimmy-Lew cleaned
up.
[303]


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Over the sink, industriously swabbing dishes, Carlton
returned to the table conversation.
“So you're really set on this teaching idea, Jimmy?”
“I think so, J. C.”
“You've a lot of fine ideals locked up in your head,
kid. I hope they stay.” John smiled wryly. "Had a few
myself, once, but ... Oh, well! Try to keep as many
as you can. You'll find it not so easy. Life at its best
isn't so good, you'll find. ... You're going home to
teach, you say?"
"Yes. I was talking to Uncle Ike-he's superintendent
in our county now—and he says that as soon as I finish
my course he'll get me right into the system. And Ellen
says that she's going to teach down there — ”
"Oh-ho!" John's brows heightened and he looked
quizzically at the boy. “So there's an Ellen?"
Jimmy-Lew grinned sheepishly. “Yes," he confided.
“She's the girl whose hair I used to pull in school.”
"And you've decided that you don't want to pull her
hair any more?"
Jimmy-Lew grinned again. “She's swell! I saw her
last summer when I was home. She's going to the In-
stitute. Geel I felt right funny meeting her after all
these years. Felt like a kid beside her-listening to her
talk about things I never even had a thought about.
They teach 'em a lot of things down there that they
don't get in school up here—about Negroes, I mean.
Gee! She makes these girls up here look like - "
"She's swell, eh?" finished John. "If I remember
rightly, Booker T. had his Ellen, too. . . . Go to it,
boy!”
[304]


Chapter Thirty-nine
IMMY-LEW was to learn that a fixed goal was an
excellent thing to have during four years of col-
lege. He entered Bolden at the peak of the pros-
perous 'twenties, when youth had a right to con-
fidence in the future. When he graduated, the
country was plunged in a financial depression, and
a college degree had lost all its power to impress. In the
interval between, old attitudes gave way to new ones
more seasoned by experience, and death altered emo-
tional ties. With all these changes to contend with, it
was good to know exactly what he wanted to do with
his life.
Arriving in Baltimore gave him a sense of return-
ing home. New York and its hurrying, breathless
crowds belonged to Tony and Dave, but not to Jimmy-
Lew. Even when he was enjoying himself he had felt
an alien. Baltimore-Queen City of Maryland, busy
with its steel mills and markets, famed for its hospital-
ity, boasting a modest tower or two in its skyline-was
[ 305]


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“Yes, I'm a freshman," replied Jimmy-Lew. "Why?"
He dropped his bag and took the tall one's measure.
"Well, you'll have to use the back door. We don't
allow dogs to come in the same door as upper class-
men!"
"And who might you be?" demanded the nettled
Jimmy.
"I happen to be an upper classman—'Lord' to you,
dog! And you're a dog--get me?”.
“Oh! And supposing I don't want to be a dog? And
supposing I don't want to use the back door?"
“Oh, yeah? Wise guy, eh? Smart dog! Take that!"
“That” was a slap in the face too swift for Jimmy-
Lew to dodge. His anger flooded. With one dart of his
hand he grabbed the “Lord,” yanked him from the
steps, and planted a neat upper-cut squarely on his chin.
But now the reserves rushed in and bore Jimmy-Lew
to the ground. In a minute, with the most impartial
good spirits, they were taking turns thrashing the new-
comer with their belts. Jimmy-Lew put up no struggle
but lay low pending the moment of his release. The
lousy bullies! He'd show 'em!
"All right—that's enough,” the giant called a halt.
Jimmy-Lew slowly gained his feet and faced them,
his jaw at a jutting angle. Without a word he sprang at
the giant, but again the three bore him to the gravel.
And again they applied themselves to strapping him
lustily.
"You got enough, dog?" the stocky boy asked, finally.
"We don't want to have to kill you!"
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lives might be glorious and interesting to you, Jimmy
Len, and you might see it all as a part of the great
American Scene. But try and do it without the good
old Uncle Tom stuff and see how far you get with it."
"You're just like a lot of other college-bred Negroes!"
growled Jimmy-Lew. "You're so puffed up with your
pseudo-knowledge, complexes, and cynicisms that you
can't see yourself as just another American. You've al-
ways got to remind yourself that you're an American
Negro, and that there's nothing glorious in your past,
and nothing hopeful in your future. You never think
in terms of coming generations."
“I'm living now!” stated Gladys, flatly. "And there's
no use in my kidding myself about how I have to live
now! What Negroes do after I'm gone won't mean a
thing to me. I'll be dead! I want to get something out
of life now! And I can't do it worrying about what's
going to be. The others can take care of that when they
get here. That's the trouble with Negroes today —
“There you go!” cried Jimmy-Lew, bitterly. “Always
talking about 'what's the trouble' like the rest of us
and doing nothing about it! You're just selfish.”
"Oh, let's cut it out, Jimmy!” Gladys laughed and slid
over against him. “We've only a few more days until
you graduate. Let's forget it. Let's just be us.”
All of the hard crust of fact and reality was gone from
her now. She had softened all over. Like this she was
irresistible-with her face lifted to his and her left
hand slowly creeping about his shoulder.
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"Let's go home," she whispered after a long embrace.
And Jimmy-Lew nodded his assent.
VI
"... to live so, that when our last deeds shall have
been recorded upon the books of our lives, we shall be
able to voice a more valiant and a prouder farewell
than it is our privilege to speak to you today. Dr.
Leander, members of the faculty and trustee board, fel-
low students, parents and friends—the class of 1931 bids
you good-by, with a firm resolve that your kindly guid-
ance, well wishes, and sacrifices shall not have been
made in vain.”
Jimmy's-Lew's earnest voice floated over the audience
of upturned faces and found a hiding-place in the deep,
creek-cut glen beyond. It was the brave voice of Youth
expressing its premature convictions, hopes, and deter-
mination. Some who heard him shared his faith and ex-
pectation. Others were inclined to skepticism. For the
day was past when a Negro with a college degree was a
unique representative of his race, an intellectual oasis
in the cultural desert. Today he was simply one in
thousands.
"Five thousand of 'em this year," one middle-aged
skeptic remarked to his companion as they rose to go
at the conclusion of the exercises.
"Yeah, I know," answered the other. “Wonder how
many of them'll do their post-grad' work in a railroad
station carrying bags.”
(315]


Chapter Forty
COW do you like it?" asked Ellen.
She had come upstairs from her primary
department—the same room where she and
Jimmy-Lew had studied under the Misses
- Warner and Winston. Jimmy-Lew turned
at his desk in the small, box-like cubicle, his face aglow.
"It's great!” he exclaimed. “When I see these kids
sitting before me I feel as if all those old slaves were
sitting right here with them and watching to see if
I'm making a good job of what they prayed for."
"You have a great dream, haven't you, Jimmy-Lew?"
Ellen's calm voice was quizzical.
"Surely!” The boy fixed intense eyes upon her. “Cer-
tainly I have a dream! I see generations unborn "
“Why not just see these for the present, Jimmy-Lew?"
Ellen tempered her practicality with a soft laugh. “I'm
going now. Are you going with me? It's after four
o'clock."
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“'Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so
pale?'” Ellen's merry voice was tinged with malice. She
turned off the switch and faced him.
“I'm neither pale nor wan,” said Jimmy-Lew, gruffly.
He added more softly: “If you had any sense at all,
you'd know I'm rather glad.”
Ellen bent serious, level eyes on her frowning com-
panion. “I suppose,” she said, not without sarcasm,
"you're going to tell me that it's for me your heart's
been pining. Really, you want me to be the balm for
your bruised ego."
“But "
"You needn't think I'm going to play Comforting
Katy.”
Since there seemed nothing to say, Jimmy-Lew kissed
her-fiercely, hungrily, a little angrily. She struggled
for a minute, then gave up. When he released her she
sank back weakly against the door of the coupé.
“Now will you listen?”
“Yes,” said Ellen, her face flaming. “Only, don't kiss
me like that again, Jimmy-Lew. It's been so lonely
down here . . . and if you don't mean it ..."
"It was you I was thinking about when I went to
Bolden, Ellen,” he answered her. "I didn't know then
... exactly. But you talked to me that summer when
I came home. I guess it must have been you all along
--sort of unconsciously. Love's funny like that, isn't
it? Guess this was what I wanted to do that day in the
station when you kissed me good-by and ran away.”
"I thought you'd forgotten that,” murmured Ellen.
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And in a minute: "Jimmy-Lew, don't fool me. Don't
tell me this now, then change.” All of her woman's prac-
ticality was gone. Again she was the girl who had waited
to walk home with the boy in the dusk of a winter's
day.
His answer was to draw her gently to him.
Hard times had made themselves felt in Shrewsbury
as elsewhere. To Jim Prince, whom the years had given
patience, one more period of depression meant little.
He had weathered storms before. He could weather this
one. And with his customary stubbornness he refused to
part with even an acre of land. Sit tight until times were
better, was his advice to any who sought it. More and
more, now, he was coming to depend upon Booker,
home from the Institute and full of book knowledge of
ecnomics and farm management. Booker belonged to
the land and would stay here in the Low Grounds.
Paul, who had never held with farming, was off to New
York, to invest his Institute learning and small capital
of savings in a business of his own.
Yes, Jim Prince felt secure in the present, and con-
fident of a future which he intrusted gladly to his three
grandsons. But his neighbor and friend, Jess Miles, had
not reasoned with the same foresight. When Ellen
needed money to complete her education, Jess sold
every foot of land he owned with the exception of the
lot on which his house stood not realizing until the
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transaction was irrevocably concluded that in selling
the land he had yielded up his heart and soul. Not long
afterward, he was stricken with paralysis, and added to
his brooding grief over the lost acres was a terror that
he would become a burden to Ellen. Within a month
after the beginning of school, he dragged himself labo-
riously out of his wheel chair and up the stairs to the
bureau which held his pistol. Ellen found his great
sprawled body when she returned that evening.
III
Now Ellen turned instinctively to Jimmy-Lew for
comfort. And Jimmy-Lew gave back to her a wealth of
tenderness that had never until now found complete
expression. They planned to be married in June, be-
fore the opening of summer school.
In the meanwhile, as they came closer to each other
in sympathy, they came closer also in their work. Ellen
helped Jimmy-Lew with his lesson plans, for she had
the advantage of a year's teaching experience. He
helped her from his richer store of academic learning,
for he had had four years of college to her three years
of normal-school training.
Out of their collaboration there emerged gradually a
scheme for a consolidated school which would serve all
the colored children of the county. There would be a
modern teaching plant centrally located at Shrewsbury,
with adequate bus service to insure the attendance of
students living in the outlying districts.
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The plan grew slowly but steadily. At one moment it
leapt ahead, urged by Jimmy-Lew's impetuous vision.
The next moment it submitted to the rein of Ellen's
common sense. Ellen could dream as well as Jimmy-
Lew, but her dreams were as a cautious bark following
the surging stream of his thought. She was a true prod-
uct of the Institute, with a mind guided by the orderly
hand of discipline.
When the plan was perfected to the point where it
seemed to them workable, they presented it to Ike as
superintendent of the county. Then for two days they
anxiously awaited his verdict. On the third, he called
them into his office.
They stood breathlessly at his desk.
"You two seem to have something worth while here,"
he said, smiling at their eagerness. “I've been thinking
about the same thing for a number of years, but I never
sat down to figure it out like this." He ran through
their points briefly. “I believe it can be worked, and
I'm going to present it to the state supervisor. Wait,"
he cautioned as they joyfully turned to each other. "I
can't promise you what his reaction will be. You see
these hard times have caused a howl among the tax-
payers, and the cost of education is one of the biggest
bones of contention.”
"But they built a new school for the white children
over in Deerfield this year '
“I know,” interrupted Ike, with a patient smile, “but
that's a horse of another color.”
“You mean a child of another color!” exclaimed
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Jimmy-Lew, bitterly. He broke off as he felt the pres-
sure of Ellen's fingers on his arm.
"I realize that, too, son,” said Ike. “But that's the way
things are. I've learned that there are more ways of
picking a chicken than scalding it. You have to learn
those things in life-especially when you're in a posi-
tion like mine. Now you two let me handle this in my
own way. I can't promise you that you'll get your plan
through this year. But"-Ike smiled again—"there are
other years ahead."
"Well—" began Jimmy-Lew, but Ellen broke in:
"Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson," she said,
quietly. “I'm sure you'll do all you can. We can wait-
can't we, Jimmy-Lew?" And she pressed his arm once
more. Jimmy-Lew murmured something inaudible and
they withdrew.
Ike sat staring at the door through which they'd
passed, his long body slumped into his favorite think-
ing position. This boy of Martha's was a problem.
There was no question but that he was a "natural" as a
teacher. That was obvious to anyone who had watched
him conduct a class. He had a gift for attracting and
holding the interest of students. Boys especially idolized
him. They knew of his athletic exploits, and because
of them were more willing to respect his scholarship.
Even Piggy Wright, of the fightin', cuttin', shootin'
Wrights, held Jimmy in awe-and no other Wright in
Ike's remembrance had submitted to a teacher's author-
ity. They were a surly, unruly clan, the Wrights; all of
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them, with the exception of Piggy's father, Ham, had
ended their careers in prison.
But Jimmy had other qualities, Ike realized, that
were less desirable in a teacher. He had Martha's im-
petuosity, and he had that forthrightness which bears
the stamp of virtue but is too often the cause of embar-
rassment. If Jimmy took a dislike to some one, he
scorned to stoop to polite deceit. At the county teachers'
meeting, for instance, it had been very apparent that he
had avoided the unpleasant, fishy-eyed, pallid little
man who was state supervisor of Negro education. And
this would never do if he was to get on in the profes-
sion. No one knew better than Ike Johnson the value of
diplomacy in the academic life. Jimmy, he feared,
needed discipline. ...
Had Ike only known it, Jimmy-Lew was being dis-
ciplined that very moment. Over at the parsonage,
where Ellen lived now, he was listening to a piece of
calm and reasonable advice, i
“You know, honey," Ellen was saying, "you must
learn to control your feelings more than you do." Her
eyes were soft with love of this great moody man who
was still so much the child.
"I guess you're right," he grinned, ruefully. “But-
I don't know why it is—when a thing is wrong, to me,
it's wrong! And I just say so, if it's a concern of mine."
“But you can't do that, Jimmy-Lew—not in life.
That's all well and good in school-sometimes not even
there—but when you're dealing with human beings in
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IV
In the gray light of the following morning Jimmy-
Lew nosed the coupé down Main Street. Ellen sat be-
side him, looking her best so he thought-in a green
swagger suit and a sliver of a brown felt hat. Beyond
her was Booker.
"Old Shrewsbury's getting to be a big town,” Jimmy-
Lew remarked, his mind running back to grammar-
school days and the athletic events that were a part of
the Saturday grubbing-up program.
"Yep," agreed Booker lazily, “but she's going to stand
still awhile now. Old Man Depression's got her. The
same," he added after a moment's consideration, "as
Institute's got Bolden today." Booker had been an ath-
lete of no mean reputation himself, and Jimmy-Lew's
antagonist on the gridiron. It pleased him to keep the
feud alive.
“One more crack like that and you'll get out and
walk," Jimmy-Lew promised him,
"One more crack from either of you,” Ellen put in,
her voice calm as always, "and you'll both walk.”
Booker retired to his corner of the seat with a great
show of meekness. But it wasn't in him to be quiet for
long.
“Did you hear about the trouble at the box factory
yesterday?”
"No," said Jimmy-Lew. "What was it?”
They were circling the court-house plaza in the mid-
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Moanin'... moanin'... moanin' guitar ... Black,
thick, labor-roughened fingers ripping the strings into
savage harmonies. ... Black, liquor-crazed minstrel ...
Black, poverty-ridden creature ...
Hard times ... out o' work ... gittin' cold ...
an' dey ain' no mo' wood in de shed ... chilluns ain'
got no shoes ... nuttin' to eat . . . credit gone ...
what I gone do? . . . what I gone do? . ..
Went to the railroad-
Laid mah head on the track!
Went to the railroad
Laid mah head on the track!
Got to thinkin' 'bout mah baby-
Snatched mah dev'lish head back!
Cryin' how long-is Ah got to wait?
Lawd-Lawd-'spect Ah bes' hes-a-tatel
What I gone do? . . . Ain' no mo' work yere in
town . . . What I gone do? . . . Goddam 'im! ...
Now come yere purty mamma-
Set on yo' daddy's kneel
Now come yere purty mamma-
Set on yo' daddy's kneel
Won't you tell me dat you lovin'
Nobody else but me?
Cryin' how long-is Ah got to wait?
Lawd-Lawd-'spect Ah bes' hes-a-tatel
'Nothah baby comin' . .. How's I gone feed 'im?
... I gots to have mah money now! ... Gots to have
it! ... Goddam 'im! ....
Um-um-some mean black snake
Bin suckin' mah rider's tonguel
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their women-folk to bargain with the merchants. There
was not a black, brown, or yellow face to be seen in all
the crowd. And the eyes under slouched hats were steely
and the voices were low.
"... Tell me old man Parsons' dyin', Jeb.”
“They say he ain't come to sence that nigger shot
'im."
"Sho orter be somep'n done 'bout it-damn niggers
is gittin' so they thinks they's much as us."
“How come they ain't nobody done got together an'
strung 'at nigger up, noways?"
“They says he's dyin', too_damn 'is black hide!”
"Wal, it's a damn shame to let' 'at nigger die in a
nice white bed—'at's all I got to say!”
“The mayor sent fo' the state troopers to guard the
hospital. 'Bout twenty of 'em strung 'round it. They
say he even sent fo' the militia. Reckon they'll be yere
in the mornin'."
“How'd he shoot ole man Parsons anyways?"
"Went out to the mill 'bout twelve 'clock an' broke
in on 'im. They says 'twas 'bout some money Parsons
owed the nigger. Ole Parsons drawed a gun an' shot
'im. But the nigger snatched it an' shot Parsons in the
chest-lung, they says. Then the nigger staggers back to
his house an' 'is boy an' gal took 'im to the hospital
bleedin' like a hog. All happened so quick didn't no-
body know 'bout it till they finds old Parsons stretched
out in 'is office 'bout twenty minutes after. ..."
"Wal, wait'll them boys from over Virginny Sho' gits
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yere. They's a bunch of 'em comin' up in cars, they
says. Things'll start poppin' then. ...".
III
Dr. Stevens, superintendent and chief surgeon of
Shrewsbury's newly built hospital, watched with anx-
ious eyes the mob that milled in front of the window.
For two hours now these madmen had been heckling
the group of two dozen troopers stationed at the en-
trance. He shuddered, reminded of that night when,
as a boy, he had watched his father rush off with fran-
tic Jim Prince, and he had crept trembling into his
mother's arms. God! He hoped the governor would
hurry those troops.
Damn depression! It put these people in an ugly
frame of mind. There'd been slight clashes already be-
tween those laborers from Virginia Shore and the lower
element of Negroes here in Shrewsbury. Parsons had
been a bigoted old fool to throw those men out of
work. Damn it! When would these people come to their
senses about their Problem! Same thing in the school
board. They robbed those colored kids and their
teachers of the money appropriated for them. Then if
you said anything about it, you were a nigger-lover!
Jesus! Give them a lousy deal all around and then ex-
pect them to grow up to be nice, intelligent, law-abid-
ing citizens! Dr. Will Stevens smiled ironically, even
while he watched the example of mob mania there
before him. Hell! Half of these men had hated old
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These Low Grounds
Parsons called him skinflint and miser! And now look
at them! Look at them in the glare of the torches they
bore! Women and children, too ... God!
“Think they'll be able to hold them off, sir?"
Dr. Will turned, startled by the tremulous voice at
his side. It was the new nurse, just graduated from
training-school. What was her name? Ramsey? Yes,
Ramsey. She was white-lipped, and in her starched uni-
form looked like a frightened blonde child at a mas
querade.
“I don't know," he answered, slowly. “That mob's
in a nasty mood. How's Mr. Parsons?”
“He's sinking faster-no hope, I'm afraid ... And
it's only a matter of minutes now for that man who
shot him. But he certainly has vitality, Look, Doc-
tor!”
The harried man jerked around to the window and
stood fixed in dismay. The mob had charged! It
swarmed around the grouped troopers, until it finally
hid them from sight.
When he could gather his wits to act, the doctor
rushed into the corridor, but the foremost of the fren-
zied pack completely submerged him before the horri-
fied eyes of Nurse Ramsey. Amid screams of the sick,
with the attendants scurrying for cover, the pack surged
onward to the ward marked “Colored," which was at
the far end of the passageway. A moment later and the
benumbed nurse, who had pulled the unconscious su-
perintendent back into his office, saw them drag a nude,
inert, black body past the door. An unearthly cry
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roared through the window and down the corridors,
like the hungry voice of some great-throated wild thing.
... Nurse Ramsey groped blindly for support, then
sank limply to the floor beside her superior.
It is done.
The streets of Shrewsbury town are silent once more.
The muddy automobiles have rattled away from the
curbs, and the shop windows are darkened. The guar-
dians of the state law rest on cots in the hospital.
Down in Gatlin's Alley shutters are tightly closed.
There is no light at any window, neither is there a
sound to be heard on the street. But inside one hovel
a black woman, large with child, moans her anguish to
a silent, brooding boy at her side. And in their miser-
ably filthy bed five younger Wrights whimper like a
litter without its mother.
In front of the court-house, now a ghostly pile of
white against the moonless night, stand three spread-
ing oaks, giving voice to the wind that sighs through
their seared leaves. From a twisted and gnarled limb of
the middle tree sways a grotesque, charred object,
strangely human in shape. The fire beneath it smolders
and dies, and there is nothing left but the white symbol
of justice looming out of the haunted darkness.
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retorted Jimmy-Lew. He sprang to his feet. “Come on!
See you, Moose and Chip."
Booker shrugged to his former opponents, then fol-
lowed his cousin and Ellen to the coupé.
Chip looked at Moose.
"I feel like a heel sitting here,” muttered Moose.
“Let's get a drink,” suggested Chip.
II
“Be careful, Jimmy-Lew!" Ellen glanced hastily at
the speedometer. The clock read “sixty.”
They were careening around the curves of the Phila-
delphia pike, and each pressure of Jimmy-Lew's impa-
tient foot shot them forward more recklessly. Once or
twice they barely avoided head-on collisions. Booker
looked askance at Ellen. But there was no word from
the driver. Finally Booker asked:
“Just why are you in such a rush to get home?"
“You ask me that?" snapped Jimmy-Lew. "If there
are any men in Shrewsbury, and we can get there in
time, there's not going to be any lynching!"
"Oh ..." Booker slumped in his seat. "Well, cuz,
if that's your mood, all I can say is, pour it in 'er. I'll
kind o' sort o' be around." His voice was quietly deter-
mined.
"You mean you're going to try to stop it?" asked
Ellen. Her heart skipped a beat when Jimmy-Lew
nodded. “All right-pour it in 'er!” Her lips drew
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thinly over her set teeth, and she tore her eyes from the
speedometer.
They had fled past Elkton and were on the lonely
stretch from there to Eastland when the motor stuttered
and coughed. In vain Jimmy-Lew pressed on the ac-
celerator. All of the pull was gone from the overstrained
mechanism.
"She's missing," said Booker. "Spark's shot."
“The mechanic at the garage at home said that the
spark plugs needed cleaning,” said Ellen.
They had slowed to a snail's pace. Jimmy-Lew fretted
and fumed. But there was nothing to do but drift until
they sighted a garage. The mechanic there took one
look and shook his head.
“Needs cleaning bad,” he said. “I can do the job in
about two hours."
“Two hours!" stormed Jimmy-Lew. "We'll try to
make it like this.”
"Yes, it's seven-thirty now," said Booker. Some of
Jimmy-Lew's impatience had crept into his voice. There
was a strange light flaring in his narrowed eyes. Ellen
looked from one to the other of these silent, taut-faced
men between whom she was wedged, and tried to still
a sudden terror that gripped her. Jimmy-Lew's taciturn-
ity she was used to. But she had never seen Booker like
this....
Four hours later they sputtered into the silent town,
the coupé lurching like some drunken thing. Booker
was the first to mark the peculiar pall that hovered in
the very air. The infrequent street lights were power-
[339]


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y
thinly over her set teeth, and she was
speedometer
They had tied past Eiksen and was
stretch from there to Eastland win . He
and coughed. in sin fimy W Wed
celerator. All of that pulis
mechanism
*Sne s TISSUE
D


These Low Grounds
less to dispel it. Then, as they rounded the half-circle of
the court-house plaza, Ellen applied the foot brake and
pointed. The men's eyes followed her trembling finger
to the grimly silent, awful thing that swung in the
horror-shrouded dark.
III
"It's no use, Ellen. ..."
It was the Friday of the following week. Jimmy-Lew
slumped at the desk in his room, glumly staring at the
cracked, worn floor. Outside a drizzly rain heightened
the gloom of the day. A train crew cursed and called
to one another on the siding as a puffing locomotive
maneuvered to connect a string of freight-cars. Chalk-
dusted erasers lay around the borders of the blackboards
where they had been carelessly dropped by pupils eager
to be gone from this place of discipline. And the atmos-
phere hung with that peculiar odor which overcrowded,
poorly ventilated schoolrooms carry at the close of the
day. Every outward indication proclaimed this Friday
like all other Fridays.
Ellen stood at the door, her tender, troubled gaze
fixed on the figure of utter defeat that was Jimmy-Lew.
All week he had avoided meeting her in the building,
and at the end of each day he had vanished. Now she
moved over to his side.
"What's no use, dear?" she asked.
“I'm going to leave this town," he said, slowly, his
eyes averted. “There's no use in my staying. Every time
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