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THERE IS CONFUSION
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THERE IS CONFUSION
BY
JESSIE REDMON FAUSET


There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble; pain on pain,TENNYSON.
BONI AND LIVERIG


H T


PUBLISHERS...::      NEW YORK
I924



Copyright, 1924, by
BoNi & LIVERIGHT, IN'-.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing,, March, 1924
Second Printin~g, May, 1924
Third Printing, August, 1924



TO MY SISTER
HELEN FAUSET LANNING
WHOSE PERSISTENT FAITH HAS MADE ME
ASHAMED TO FALTER
1



I



THERE IS CONFUSION



I



THERE IS CONFUSION
CHAPTER I
OANNA'S first consciousness of the close understanding
which existed between herself and her father dated back
to a time when she was very young. Her mother, her
brothers and her sister had gone to church, and Joanna, suffering from some slight childish complaint, had been left home.
She had climbed upon her father's knee demanding a story.
"What sort of story?" Joel Marshall asked, willing and
anxious to please her, for she was his favorite child.
"Story 'bout somebody great, Daddy. Great like I'm going
to be when I get to be a big girl."
He stared at her amazed and adoring. She was like a little,
living echo out of his own forgotten past. Joel Marshall,
born a slave and the son of a slave in Richmond, Virginia, had
felt as a little boy that same impulse to greatness.
"As a little tyke," his mother used to tell her friends, "he
was always pesterin' me: 'Mammy, I'll be a great man some
day, won't I? Mammy, you're gonna help me to be great?'
"But that was a long time ago, just a year or so after the
war," said Mammy, rocking complacently in her comfortable
chair: "How wuz I to know he'd be a great caterer, feedin'
bank presidents and everything?  Once you know they had
him fix a banquet fur President Grant. Sent all the way to
Richmond fur 'im. That's howcome he settled yere in New
York; yassuh, my son is sure a great man."
But alas for poor Joel! His idea of greatness and his
9



THERE IS CONFUSION


11


in grateful return he made her the one other consideration of
his life, weaving unconsciously aboul himself a web of such
loyalty and regard for her that he could not have broken
through it if he would. Her very sympathy defeated his purpose. So that when she, too, fell ill on a day with what seemed
for years an-incurable affection, Joel shut his teeth and put
his frustrated plans behind him.
He drew his small savings from the bank and rented a tiny
two and a half room shack in the front room of which he
opened a restaurant,-really a little lunchstand. He was
patronized at first only,-and that sparingly-by his own
people. But gradually the fame of his wonderful sandwiches,
his inimitable pastries, his pancakes, brought him first more
black customers, then white ones, then outside orders. In five
years' time Joel's catering became known state wide. He
conquered poverty and came to know the meaning of comfort.
The Grant incident created a reputation for him in New York
and he was shrewd enough to take advantage of it and move
there.
Ten years too late old Mrs. Marshall was pronounced cured
by the doctors. She never understood what her defection had
cost her son. His material success, his position in the church,
in the community at large and in the colored business world,all these things meant "power." To her, her son was already
great. Joel did not undertake to explain to her that his lack
of education would be a bar forever between him and the kind
of greatness for which his heart had yearned.
It was after he moved to New York and after the death
of his mother that Joel married. His wife had been a school
teacher, and her precision of language and exactitude in small
matters made Joel think again of the education and subsequent
greatness which were to have been his. His wife was kind
and sweet, but fundamentally unambitious, and for a time the
pleasure of having a home and in contrasting these days of ease



12


THERE IS CONFUSION


with the hardships of youth made Joel somewhat resigned to
his fate.
"Besides, it's too late now," he used to tell himself. "What
could I be?" So he contented himself with putting by his
money, and attending church, where he was a steward and
really the unacknowledged head.
His first child brought back the old keen longing. It was a
boy and Joel, bending over the small, warm, brown bundle,
felt a gleam of hope. He would name it Joel and would instil,
or more likely, stimulate the ambition which he felt must be
already in that tiny brain. But his wife wouldn't hear of
the name Joel.
"It's hard enough for him to be colored," she said jealously
guarding her young, "and to, call him a stiff old-fashioned
name like that would finish his bad luck. I am going to name
him Alexander."
Alec, as he was usually called, did not resemble his father
in the least. He was the average baby and the average boy,
interested in marbles, in playing hookey, in parachutes, but
with no determination to be a dark Napoleon or a Frederick
Douglass. Two other children, Philip and Sylvia, resembled
him, and Joel Marshall, now a man of forty, gave up his old
ideas completely and decided to be a good business man,
husband and father; not a bad decision if he had but known it.
Then Joanna came; Joanna with a fluff of thick, black hair,
and solemn, earnest eyes and an infinite capacity for spending
long moments in thought. "She's like you, Joel," Mrs. Marshall said. And because the novelty of choosing names for
babies had somewhat worn off, she made no objection to the
name Joanna, which Joel hesitatingly proposed for her. "She
certainly should have been named for you," the mother told
him a month later; "see how she follows you with her eyes.
She'd rather watch you than eat."
And indeed from the very beginning Joanna showed her



THERE IS CONFUSION


13


preference for her father. The two seemed to have a secret
understanding. After the first child, Mrs. Marshall had
fretted somewhat over the time and strength expended in
caring for the other little Marshalls, but she never had any
occasion to worry about Joanna. Joel had his office in his
residence, and after Joanna was dressed and fed, all she wanted
was to lie in her carriage and later to ride about on the kiddiecar of that day in her father's office, where she watched him
with her solemn eyes.
Joel never forgot the first time she asked him for a story.
He was in the habit of regaling his youngsters with tales of
his early life, of himself, of boys who had grown up with him,
of ball-games and boyish pranks. The three older children
had a fine catholicity of taste. "Tell us a story," was all they
asked, its subject made no difference to them.
But on that certain Sunday before Joanna was five years
old she perched herself on her father's knee and commanded
astoundingly:
"Tell me a story, Daddy, 'bout somebody great."
Joel didn't know what she meant at first, so far removed
was he from the thought of his old dream. And yet the question did seem something like an echo, faint but recognizable
of a longing that had once loomed large in his life.
"Great," he repeated. "How do you mean great, Baby?
Tall, great big man, like Daddy, hey?" He stood six feet and
was broad with it.
Joanna shook a dissenting head. "No, not great that way.
I want to hear about a man who did things nobody else could
do,-maybe he put out a fire," she ended doubtfully, "but I
mean something greater than that."
Joel had her taught to read after that. She was a little
frail for school, and did not start until later than the other
children, though she was far the most studious. So she had
three or four years of solid reading, and always her choice of



CHAPTER II


OANNA was like her father not only so far as ambition
was concerned but also in her willingness to work. She
had a fine serious mind, a little slow-moving at first, but
working with a splendid precision that helped her through
many a hard place. Her quality of being able to stick to a
problem until she was satisfied served in the long run as well
as her sister Sylvia's greater quickness and versatility. Eventually, too, Joanna's laboriousness and native exactness produced
in her the result of an oft-sharpened knife. The method which
she applied to one study, she remembered to apply to another,
and if this failed then she was able to make combinations.
Usually she had to have things explained to her from the
very beginning, either by a teacher or through directions in a
book. But to offset this slowness she had a good sense of
logic, a strong power of concentration, and a remarkably retentive and visualizing memory.
Sylvia and she, destined to be such perfect friends in their
maturity, were not very sympathetic in their childhood. The
older girl was thoughtless, quick to jump at conclusions,
natively witty and strongly disinclined toward seriousness.
"Joanna makes me sick," was her constant cry, "always
thinking of her lessons and how important she's going to be
when she's grown-up. So tiresome, too, wanting to talk about
what she's going to do all the time, with no interest in your
affairs."
Which was not quite true, for Joanna was mightily interested
in people who had a "purpose" in life. Otherwise not at all.



THERE IS CONFUSION


17


This was where she differed most from her father. With Joel
success and distinction had been his dream, his dearest wish,
But always he had realized that there were other things which
might interfere. With Joanna success and distinction were an
obsession. It never occurred to her that life was anything but
what a man chose to make it, provided, of course, he did choose
to make it something. Her brothers' and Sylvia's haphazard
methods were always incomprehensible to her, and this gave,
her the least touch of the "holier than thou" manner.
Her mother insisted on each child's learning to do housework. Even the boys were not exempt from this, indeed they
rather liked it. Sylvia made no complaint though she occasionally bribed Alec or Philip to do her stint for her. Joanna
never complained, either, yet she made up her mind early that
as a woman she would never do this kind of work. Not that
she despised it, she simply considered it labor lost for, a person
who like herself might be spending her time in more beautiful
and more graceful activities. Yet in spite of her dislike, she
always lingered longest over her work, and the room or the
silver which she had cleaned always looked the best. It is true
she never learned to iron especially well, but this was about the
only thing in which she yielded place to Sylvia.
Sylvia was like a fire-fly in comparison with Joanna's steady
beaconlike flood of light. Sylvia dashed about, worked as
quickly as she thought and produced immediate and usually
rather striking results. Sylvia with a ribbon, or a piece of
lace and a ready needle and thread could give the effect of
possessing two dresses, whereas she had only the one. Sylvia
dressed the dolls, hiring Joanna's remarkable and usually disregarded assembly of these so that she might make them new
clothes. She drove an honest bargain. If Joanna would let
her play store with her dolls for a week, one of them could
keep the new dress which Sylvia would have made for her;
Joanna's dolls were usually in Sylvia's care.



18


THERE IS CONFUSION


Yet when Joanna did sew or knit, her stitches and pieces
bore inspection much better than Sylvia's. By the same token,
however, they missed Sylvia's dash.
In one thing only did Joanna show real abandon, that was
in dancing. Sylvia was as light as thistle-down on her feet,
but Joanna was like the spirit of dancing. She had grace, the
very poetry of motion, and she could dance any step however
intricate if she saw it once.
"If you want to get Joanna to play," Maggie Ellersley,
Sylvia's chum and school-mate would say impatiently, "you
must start some singing or dancing game. She wouldn't play
'I Spy' or 'Pussy wants a corner' with you for worlds."
Any sort of folk-song or dance, though she did not know
them by that name, delighted the child. Usually she held herself aloof, but in summer down on Fifty-ninth Street Joanna
was one with the children in the street, singing, dancing, jumping rope in unexpected and fancy ways.
Sylvia's and Maggie's and even her brothers' rougher scoffing
affected her not at all, not only because she had the calm selfassurance which is the first step toward success, but also
because of old Joel's strong belief in her.
Joel believed that all things were possible. "Nothing in
reason," he used to tell Joanna, "is impossible. Forty years
ago I was almost a pauper in Richmond. Look at me to-day.
I spend more on you in a month, Joanna, than my mother and
I ever saw in a five-year stretch. One hundred years ago and
nearly all of us were slaves. See what we are now. Ten years
ago people would have laughed at the thought of colored
people on the stage. Look at the bill-boards on Broadway."
It was in the first part of the century when Williams and
Walker, Cole and Johnson, Ada Overton and others were at
their zenith. Old Joel believed them the precursors of greater
things. Since Joanna's gifts were those of singing and dancing,
he hoped to make her famous the country over. Of course he



THERE IS CONFUSION


19g


would have preferred a more serious form of, endowment. But
such as it was, it was Joanna's, and must be developed. Joel
Marshall believed in using the gifts nearpst at hand.
"And don't think anything about being colored," he used
to say.
"It might be different if you lived in some other part of the
country, but here in this section it may not interfere much
more than being poor, or having some slight deformity. I have
often noticed," said Joel, who had used his powers of observation to no small advantage, "that having some natural drawback often pushes you forward, that is if you've got anything
in you to start with. It might even happen," he added,
launched now on his favorite theme, "that your color would
add to your success. Depend on it if you've got something
which these white folks haven't got, or can do something better
than they can, they'll call on you fast enough and your color
will only make you more noticeable."
Joanna used to listen interestedly. Not that in those early
years she always understood fully everything her father said,
but his talk created for her a kind of atmosphere which created
in turn a feeling of assurance and self-confidence which was
really superb.
Another theory of Joel's which he had worked out for himself, and which in no small degree contributed to Joanna's
education was his early understanding of the natural rights of
men inherent in the mere fact of living. He told Joanna that
no class of men remained static throughout the ages,-he had
not used these words, it is true, but he had cbme pretty near
it. Somewhere in those early days of his in odd scraps of
reading he had learned that Greece had once been enslaved;
that Russia had but recently freed her serfs; that England
possessed a submerged class.
"All people, all countries, have their ups 'and downs,
Joanna " he would tell her gravely, "and just now it's our turn



CHAPTER III


IT was Joanna's love for beauty that made her consciously see Peter Bye. It is true that almost as soon as
she saw him she lost sight of him again, for the boy did
not come up to her requirements which, even at the early age
at which these two met, were quite crystallized. Joanna liked
first of all fixity of purpose. The phrase "When I grow up,
I'm going to be" was constantly on her lips. She got into
the habit of measuring people, "sizing them up" Joel would
have said, in accordance with the amount of steadfastness,
perseverance and ambition which they displayed. She had
little time for shiftless or "do-less" persons. Sylvia used to
say, half angrily, "Joanna, when the bad man gets you, he isn't
going to torture you. He's just going to shut you up with
lazy, good-for-nothing folks. That will be torture enough
for you."
Peter Bye, in spite of the dark arresting beauty which first
drew Joanna's glance to him across the other white and pink
faces in the crowded schoolroom, was undoubtedly shiftless.
"Not lazy," Joanna said to herself, looking at him from under
level brows before she dismissed him forever from her busy
mind. "It's just that he doesn't care; he just doesn't want to
be anybody."
She was too young to understand the power of that great
force, heredity. She had no notion of the part which it played
in her own life. Peter was the legitimate result of a heredity
that had become a tradition, of a tradition that had become
21



22


THERE IS CONFUSION


warped, that had gone astray and had carried Peter and Peter
Bye's father along in its general wreckage.
It is impossible to understand the boy's character without
some knowledge of the lives of those who had gone before
him.
As far back as the last decades of the eighteenth century there
had been white Byes and black Byes in Philadelphia. The
black Byes were known to be the chattels of Aaron and Dinah
Bye, Quakers, who without reluctance had set free their slaves,
among them black Joshua Bye, the great-grandfather of Peter.
This was done in 1780 according to the laws of Pennsylvania,
which thus allowed the Quakers to salve their consciences
without offending their thrifty instincts.
Aaron Bye, most people said, was unusually good to his
slaves. He had something of the patriarchal instinct and liked
to think of himself as ruler over the destiny of many people,
his wife's, his children's and more completely that of his slaves.
Certainly he was very kind to Joshua's mother, Judy. She
was a tall, straight, steely, black woman with fine inscrutable
eyes, a thin-lipped mouth and a large but shapely nose. She
bore about her a quality of brooding, of mystery, embodying
the attraction which she exercised for many men, white and
black. But apparently she knew little of this. Her only weakness, if such it might be called, was an inexplicable attachment
to the white Bye family. She married, a few years before
receiving her freedom, a man named Ceazer, a proud, surly,
handsome individual, who refused to adopt the surname of
his master; he had belonged to white people named Morton.
Since even after freedom Judy would not hear to leaving the
Bye family, Aaron Bye greatly pleased by this loyalty offered
the position of coachman to Ceazer, which the latter, with his
customary surliness, accepted. Later he not only threw up
his job, but ran away, vanishing finally into legend.
His was a strange truculent character; he hated slavery,



THERE IS CONFUSION


23


hated all white people, hated particularly the Mortons, hated
ineffably Aaron Bye. He wanted nothing at his hands. Once
he knocked down another Negro who referred to him as "Mist'
Bye's man." He was no man's man, he assured the stricken
narrator, least of all the man of that damn Quaker. His
enmity went to ridiculous lengths. Aaron Bye taught Joshua
how to write and gave him a little black testament for a prize.
IX it he wrote "The gift of Aaron Bye." Joshua, delighted,
wrote his own name under the inscription and ran and showed
it to his mother. She, it turned out, had not been watching his
making of pothooks without purpose. Underneath her boy's
name she fashioned in halting crazy characters her single
attempt at writing, her own name, Judy Bye. Nothing would
serve Joshua then but that he must have Ceazer's name in
the book, too. Remembering that his father could not write,
Joshua wrote out himself with a fine flourish "Ceazer Bye"
and showed the name to its owner, entreating him to make his
mark beside it. Ceazer took up the pen in his strong, wiry
fingers.
"Which one ob dese did you say were mine?"
joshua pointed it out, waiting for the cross. Ceazer made a
mark, it was true, but it was a thick broad line drawn through
his name with a fury which almost tore the thin page. He
was no Bye!
It was not long after this that he disappeared, a strange,
brooding, intractable figure.
Joshua, although born in slavery, had never known the institution in its more hideous aspects. He had been a very little
boy when his freedom came to him. And Ceazer, old Judy
told him, had fought in the Revolution! So that Joshua knew
more of warfare to set people free than of slavery for which
war was later to be waged. From him his son Isaiah heard
almost nothing of the old regime, though there were many
vestiges of it on all sides. All he knew was that Joshua had



24


THERE IS CON~FUSIONN


kept on working for Dinah and Aaron Bye after his emancipation, and that they had given him on the occasion of his
marriage to Belle Potter a huge Family Bible, bound in leather
and with an Apocrypha. On the title-page was written in a
fine old script: To Joshua and Belle Bye from Aaron and
Dinah Bye. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
For a long time to Isaiah, wh6 used to pore absorbedly as a
boy over this book with its pictures and long old-fashioned S,
this inscription savored of vineyards and orchards. The white
Byes, as a matter of fact, were the possessors of very fine
peach-orchards in the neighborhood of what is now known as
Bryn Mawr, and Isaiah, even as a little fellow, had been taken
out there to pick peaches.
His father Joshua had spent his life in making those orchards
what they were; a born agriculturist, he had an uncanny
knowledge of planting, of grafting, of fertilizing. Many a
farmer tried to inveigle him from Aaron Bye. But although
Joshua's wages were small, he had inherited his mother's blind,
invincible attachment for the Byes. His place was with Aaron.
It was young white Meriwether Bye, youngest son of Aaron's
and Dinah's ten children, who told Isaiah what the inscription
meant. Joshua had not married until he was nearly fifty and
his single son, black Isaiah, and white Meriwether were boys
together. Meriwether used to come to the Bye house at
Fourth and Coates Streets, which is now Fairmount Avenue, as
often as Isaiah used to appear at the Bye house at Fourth and
Spruce.
Isaiah showed the inscription to Meriwether, "By their
fruits ye shall know them."
"Yes," said young Merry tracing the letters with a fat
finger, "that's our family motto." Isaiah wanted to know what
a motto was.
"Something," Meriwether told him vaguely, "that your
whole family goes by." The black boy thought that likely.



THERE IS CONIFUSION


25


"Everybody knows Bye peaches, ain't that so? 'Cause of
that everybody knows the Byes."
Meriwether, though impressed by this logic, didn't think that
that was what was meant. A subsequent conversation with
his father confirmed his opinion.
"It means this, Ziah," he said one hot July afternoon walking
home with the colored boy from the brickyard where Isaiah
worked, "it means it shows the kind of stuff you are. It
means-now-you see a bare tree in the winter time don't you,
and you don't know what it is? But you do perhaps know an
apple blossom when you see it, or a peach blossom. In the
spring you see that tree covered, let's say, with apple blossoms.
Well, you know it's an apple tree."
"But what's that got to do with us?" Isaiah wanted to
know. He was interested, he could not tell why, but his slowworking mind clung to its first idea. "Your father wrote it in
the book he gave my father. My father hasn't any fruit trees."
Isaiah never forgot the answer Meriwether made him in the
unconscious cruelty of youth. "When it comes to people,"
said the young Quaker, "it means pretty much the same thing.
Now when I grow up, I'm going to be a great doctor," his chest
swelled, "but nobody will be surprised. They'll all say, 'Of
course, he's the son of Aaron Bye, the rich peach-merchant.
Good stock there,'" he involuntarily mimicked his pompous
father; "and I'll be good fruit. That's the way it always is:
good trees, good fruit; rich, important people, rich important
sons."
"What'll I be?" asked Isaiah Bye, grotesquely tragic in his
tattered clothes, the sweat rolling off his shiny face, so intent
was his interest.
"Well," Meriwether countered judicially, "what could you
be?" He pondered a moment, his own position so secure that
he was willing to do his best by this serious case. "Your father
and your father's father were slaves. 'Course your father's free



26


THIERE ICS CONFUSION


now but he's just a servant. He's not what you'd call his own
man. So I s'pose that's what you'll be, a good servant. Tell
you what, Isaiah, you can be my coachman. I'll be good to
you. And when you're grown up," said Meriwether with more
imagination than he usually displayed, "I'll point you out to
some famous doctor from France and say, 'His father was a
good servant to my father, and he's been a good servant to my
father's son.' How'll you like that?" Meriwether tapped him
fondly if somewhat condescendingly on the arm.
"You'll never," said Isaiah Bye, drawing back from the
familiar touch, "you'll never be able to say that about me."
And he turned and ran down the hot street, leaving Meriwether
Bye gaping on the sidewalk.
After that his father could never persuade him to enter
again the Bye house, or the Bye orchards. Fortunately his
mother upheld him here. "'Tain't as though he had to work
for them old Byes," she said straightening up her already
straight shoulders. "He makes just as much and more in the
brick-yard and in helpin' Amos White haul."
"I know that," Joshua would reply impatiently, "but old
Mist' Aaron says-now-he likes to have his own people
workin' roun' him. And I don't like to disappoint him."
Belle Bye told Isaiah. "I'm not one of his own people, Ma,"
he answered stubbornly, "and after that I'm not ever goin'
back." Belle was rejoiced to hear this. She would have been
an insurgent in any walk of life. Joshua was the genuine peasant type-the type, black or white, which believes in a superior
class and yields blindly to its mandates. But Belle had seen
too many changes even in her thirty-five years-she was far
younger than Joshua-not to know that many things are
possible if one just has courage.
Isaiah, on being questioned, told his mother with considerable reluctance about his conversation with Meriwether. Belle,
while regretting the breach, understood. She had been glad to



THERE IS CONFUSION


27


have her boy the associate of young white Bye. Without
expressing it to herself in so many words she had realized that
association with Meriwether was an education for Isaiah.
Already he was talking more correctly than other colored boys
in his group, his manners were good, and though his work
was of the roughest kind, his vision was broad, he knew there
were other things.
"I don't believe," his mother told him wisely, "that you kin
go as fur as you dream. Too many things agin you fur that,
boy. But you kin die much further along the road than when
you was born. Never forget that."
So Isaiah was saved from the initial mistake of aiming too
high and of coming utterly to smash. Yet he accomplished
wonders. Who shall say how he increased his slender store of
knowledge? How he learned to read wise books borrowed and
bought as best he might? How he learned geography and history that made his heart-beats go wild since it told him of the
French Revolution and how a whole nation once practically
enslaved arose to a fuller, richer life?
The inspiration for all this lay in those careless words of
young Meriwether. Although Isaiah met the young fellow
many times after that incident, and apparently with friendliness, he never in his heart forgave him. Like Ceazer he developed a dislike for white people and their ways which developed,
however, into a sturdy independence and an unyielding pride.
No amount of contumely ever made him ashamed of his slave
ancestry. On the contrary, to measure himself against old
Ceazer and Judy gave him ground for honest pride. "See what
they were and how far I've gone," he used to say, pleasantly
boastful.
He resented as few sons of freedmen did the assurance with
which the white Byes took their wealth and position and
power. "Hoisted themselves on the backs of the black Byes."
He resented especially the ingratitude of Aaron Bye to Joshua.



28            THERE IS CONFUSION
For himself he asked nothing; being content to fight his own
way "through an onfriendly world."
The white Byes had gone far, but the black Byes having now
that greatest of all gifts, freedom, would go far, too. They
would be leaders of other black men.
The upshot of all this was that Isaiah Bye opened a school
for colored youth down on Vine Street. No name and no
figure in colored life in Philadelphia was ever better beloved
and more revered than his.



CHAPTER IV


JSAIAH did not marry until he was thirty-one, which was
an advanced age for his times. Even then he had married
earlier than his father. Old Joshua, who died long before
Isaiah's marriage, had been inordinately proud of his one son.
"Jes' wouldn't work fer white folks," Joshua used to say,
"that weren't good enough fer him."
Isaiah and Miriam Sayres Bye had one son. "Meriwether,"
Isaiah wrote in Aaron and Dinah Bye's old gift, and under it in
a script as fine and characteristic as that of the original
inscription: "By his fruits shall ye know-me." It was a
strange but not unnatural bit of pride, the same pride which
had made him name this squirming bundle of potentialities,
"Meriwether,-Meriwether Bye," a boy with the same name
which old white Aaron Bye's son had borne and with as good
chances. The Civil War was on the horizon then and Isaiah
Bye, with that calm expectation of the unexpected which was
his mother's chiefest legacy, was sure that in that grand ml6ee
all his people would know freedom. So black Meriwether Bye,
born like himself in freedom, would know nothing but that
estate when he began to have understanding.
Isaiah had accumulated a little, though how that was possible, no one aware of his tiny stipend could guess. It is true
he not only taught school, but he had outside pupils, ex-slaves,
freedmen, men like himself born in freedom, but unable through
economic pressure to enjoy it except in name,-all these
crowded his home at night on Vine Street, and sweated mightily over primers and pothooks and the abacus. Twenty-five
29



30


THERE IS CONFUSION


cents an hour he charged them, giving each a meticulous care
such as would bring a modern tutor many dollars. He wrote
letters, pamphlets, too, for that marvelous organization already
well established, the A. M. E. Church. His wife had a sister
whose husband kept a second-hand shop and from this source
he earned an occasional dollar. When Meriwether was eight,
Isaiah owned two houses in Pearl Street, the house in Vine
Street, a half interest in his brother-in-law's store and a plot
in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
From the very beginning Meriwether knew he was to be a
great man-a doctor, his father had said emphatically. And
Meriwether repeated it by rote. He was a clever enough child
though without his father's solid trait of concentration. But
he liked the idea of greatness-that and the profession of
medicine came to be synonymous with him as it was already
with his father. Otherwise it is likely that both of them would
have seen earlier the boy's inaptitude for the calling thus
thrust upon him.
Meriwether went to his father's school, to Mr. Jonas Howard's catering establishment, which he loved, to Sunday-School
and to his Uncle Peter's second-hand store. In any one of
these places he was at home. He might have made a good
teacher, caterer, minister or storekeeper. Yet he meandered
on, doing absolutely mediocre work, never failing, never shining,
and always rather purposely waiting the day which should
bring him to the Medical School.
He was waiting for something else, too, though this Isaiah
never guessed. He was waiting for some sign of help or recognition from the white Byes. His father had told him of the
slaveholder's great debt to old Joshua; he had taken him
riding past the Bryn Mawr peach orchards. "By rights part
of them ought to belong to us. But I don't mind, no sir-eel
Let 'em have 'em. See where we are to-day without their help.
Think of it!"



THERE IS CONFUSION


31


Meriwether did think of it and did mind it. He learned
that he had been named after the son of his grandfather's
patron and somehow it seemed impossible to him that that
mere fact should not result in something tangibly advantageous.
He lacked the imagination to understand the pride which
actuated Isaiah to name his boy as he had. The year before
Meriwether was to enter medical school, Isaiah, fortunately,
for himself, died.
A few months later Miriam died, too. Meriwether was left
sole heir to the three houses and two or three hundred dollars.
He was tired of school and not at all displeased with the idea
of being his own master. He would like a little vacation, he
fancied, and a chance to see the world. Somebody told him of
a good way to do this-why not get a job as train porter?
The idea pleased him; there was travel, easy money, besides
his little property in Philadelphia. And afterwards perhaps
there would be the patron for whom he had been named, Dr.
Meriwether Bye of Bryn Mawr.
Isaiah's mother, Belle Bye, used to say, "Things you do
expect and things you don't expect are sure to come to pass."
It took Isaiah many years to see the reasonableness of this
apparently unreasoned statement. Certainly one of the things
he never expected to come to pass was that his boy Meriwether
should, first, give up altogether his project of studying medicine
and, second, that bit by bit, through sickness, gambling, and
a hitherto unsuspected penchant for sheer laziness, he should
run through his Philadelphia property, thus wiping away all
that edifice of respectability and good citizenship which Isaiah
Bye had so carefully built up.
Colored Philadelphia society is organized as definitely as,
and even a little more carefully than, Philadelphia white
society. One wasn't "in" in those old days unless one were,
first, "an old citizen," and, second, unless one were eminently
respectable,-almost it might be said God-fearing. Meriwether



32


THERE IS CONFUSION


having been born to this estate suffered all the inconveniences
coming to a member of a group at that time small and closely
welded. His business was everybody's business. His Uncle
Peter had upbraided him for not studying medicine. Jonas
Howard, the caterer, knew about his first real estate transfer.
The young Howards and his cousins knew about his gambling
and rebuked him admiringly. On one of his "runs" Meriwether spent a week in New York. This was in 1889. Not a
single colored person knew him or cared about him. He rented
a room in klity-third Street and made that his headquarters.
Later he rented two rooms and married a young seamstress who
died in I891 when her boy was born.
Meriwether did do two things after that. First he wrote
to Dr. Meriwether Bye telling him who he was and implying he
would not disdain a little aid. It is doubtful if the doctor,
who at that time was traveling in Europe with his tiny grandson, ever received the letter. Second, he took to drink. More
than anything else he fell into a deep, ineluctable mood of
melancholia. Here he was, Meriwether Bye, destined to be a
great man, a famous physician. Why, he had been a man of
property once, with money in the bank! And now he was just
a poor nobody, picking up odd jobs, paying his room rent
fearfully from week to week, sometimes pawning Isaiah Bye's
chased gold watch.
How he worked it out he himself could not have told. But
he saw himself a martyr, "driven by fate" from the high eminence of his father's dreams to his own poor realities. Think
how he had struggled, sacrificed-he believed it-the fun
and freedom of youth to come to this! "How," said Meriwether Bye harking back to Sunday-School days, "how are
the mighty fallen!" And how easily might they have remained
mighty.
He named his boy Peter after his Uncle Peter, in whose



THERE IS CONF~USION


33


second-hand shop in Philadelphia he had spent delightful
hours.
Now see the perversity of human nature. Just as his father
Isaiah Bye had talked to his son Meriwether about the reward
of effort and faithful toil, just so Meriwether talked to Peter
about the futility of labor and ambition. And in particular he
talked to him about the ingratitude of the white Byes-of all
white people.
"It makes no difference, Peter, what you dot or how hard
you work. The rewards of life are only fort i-:h or such.
You may pour your heart's blood out,"-he had a fine gift
of rhetoric —"and still achieve nothing. Think of your greatgrandfather. Fate favors those whom she chooses. Blessed
is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed."
Or, "Peter, if life has any favors for you, she'll give them to
you without your asking for them. The world owes you a
living, let it come to you, don't bother going after it."
How completely his son might be absorbing all this, Meriwether never knew, for Peter; vocal enough with his playmates
and others, maintained an owlish silence when his father thus
harangued him.
But his aunt knew. She was a tall, stout, yellow woman,
with that ineffable look of sadness in her eyes characteristic of
a certain type of colored people. She was the sister of Peter's
mother, and when Peter's father died, suddenly, inconsequently, she accepted uncomplainingly his son along with her
other burdens.
Peter was then twelve; extraordinarily handsome, vivid and
alert. Miss Susan Graves riding home from the cemetery
reflected that he might be not such a burden after all. Clearly
he would soon want to be taking care of himself.
"Peter," she said thoughtfully, "what do you want to do
when you grow up?"
"Oh, I don't know," her nephew replied, temporarily remov



CHAPTER V


IT may seem a cold-blooded thing to say, but the dying of
Meriwether Bye was about the best thing he could have
done for his son, Peter. Certainly that was what Miss
Susan Graves thought as she viewed rather grimly the small
and motley collection of belongings which Peter transferred
to her home in his little express wagon from his father's former
landlady, Mrs. Reading. The collection consisted of a wellworn extra suit of clothes, another pair of shoes, some underwear in sad need of patching, some books chiefly on physiology
and anatomy, the Bye Family Bible, a little old black testament, and a box of letters. There was also a big railroad map
which Peter lugged along under his arm and from which he
stubbornly refused to be parted. Meriwether, in his brighter
moods, used to refer to his "runs" as "business-trips" and would
point out to Peter just where he would go on such and such a
date. The boy learned a lot of geography in this way, and was
talking to his playmates about Duluth and Jacksonville, Sacramento and Denver, before most of them knew that they personally were living in the country's metropolis.
The books on medicine and anatomy had been well thumbed
by Peter, too. Meriwether had received them from old Isaiah,
his father, and had carried them around on his runs to impress
his co-workers in the Pullman service.
I Later he got into the habit of reading from them to Peter
who always listened in the grave silence which he usually
reserved for his father's effusions. For some reason the little
boy's brain retained the various and amazing things which his
35



36


THERE IS CONFUSION


father read to him from the dry old books. Long before he
knew his multiplication tables he knew the names of the principal bones of the body and the course of the food. In fact
these books were his first readers, for Meriwether, more interested in this dry stuff, now that it was too late to profit him
anything, taught his boy how to pronounce the difficult names,
so that the latter could read to him. Perhaps the poor fellow,
dissolute and weak failure though he was, thought that some
of the old "greatness" might still accrue to him by this fiction
of studying at medicine.
The Bible was the one thing that Peter knew least about.
He looked into it once or twice and hitting on Isaiah Bye's
tragically proud inscription: "By his fruits ye shall knowme," spelled it out laboriously, —he always had trouble in reading script,-and asked his father with some natural perplexity
what it meant. But Meriwether snatched the book away from
him with such a black look and took such pains to put it out
of his reach, that Peter for a long time thought the Bible, or
at any rate that inscription, must be something decidedly off
color. He waited until his father had gone on his next
"business-trip" before investigating again, but finding the
book nowhere as exciting as his beloved Anatomy, he gave up
the puzzle and attributed his father's defection to the inscrutable whims and vagaries of the genus called parents. He
valued that old Bible the least of all his possessions. That
was the bitterest day of his life when he found out what it
ought to mean to him.
Miss Susan, though not an "old Philadelphian" herself, knew
something of colored Philadelphia's pride in the possession of
family and tradition. She would have been glad of course if
Meriwether Bye had left Peter some money. But of the two
she would-very much rather have had the Bible with its absolute assurance of the former standing and respectability of the
black Byes. She had a family tradition of her own, for she



THERE IS CONFUSION


37


T
was a member of the Graves family of Gravestown, New Jersey,
a clan well known to colored people not only in that vicinity,,
but also throughout Pennsylvania.
The -story is that two white sisters in the middle of the
eighteenth century fell in love with two of their father's black
slaves. The Negroes may have been African Princes for all any
one knows to the contrary. Since nothing they could do or say
would win their father's consent to such a union, the girls ran
away with their lovers, and married them, with or without benefit of clergy it is impossible to relate. Nature and God alike,
instead of being disconcerted at this utter contravention of
the laws of man, presented each couple with numerous children.
When these reached mating age, finding themselves out of
favor with both black and white of their community, the
cousins solved the problem by marrying each other. Thet
children of each generation did the same, whether driven to
it by like necessity or not, history does not say. But by the
time the next brood appeared a precedent had been established,
and Graves married Graves not only as a matter of course, but
as a matter of pride. They were able to do this, being automatically rendered free by the fact that a white woman had
married a black man.
Miss Susan Graves had not married for the simple and sufficient reason that in her day there were not enough male
Graves to go around. She would as soon have thought of
marrying outside her family as a Spanish grandee would have
thought of marrying an English cockney. In those days the
position of old maid had its decided disadvantages-few people
if any gave her the benefit of the doubt that she might have
remained single from choice. Yet Miss Susan Graves, in spite
of three other offers, soared on family pride above all this and
made her career that of housekeeper for the family of a
wealthy merchant on Girard Avenue, in Philadelphia. (You



38


THERE IS CONFUSION


must marry a Graves, but obviously you obtained work where
you could find it.)
There was a younger sister, Alice Graves, not as direct in
purpose as Susan, yet in some respects curiously strong. She
had always considered the Graves' tradition silly: it was so
unexciting marrying someone whom you had known and seen
all your life. What was marriage for if not for a change?
When the oldest son of Merchant Sharples of Girard Avenue
married and went to New York, Susan Graves went along as
housekeeper. And thither Alice Graves followed shortly to
do sewing for that intricate but orderly household. Meriwether
Bye, who had known both ladies in Philadelphia —for Miss
Susan Bye was a frequent visitor both at his father's and his
Uncle Peter's house-came to see them in his rare fits of loneliness, and between runs courted Alice Graves in Central Park.
Of course it would have been better if Alice could have married a Graves, but Susan resigned herself easily to the matterfor Bye belonged to old stock and must, she thought, make
good eventually. But she developed a strong dislike for him
before his death, and took Peter not only for his mother's
sake but also to dispel if possible his father's doubtless harmful
influence.
Peter was a surprise to his aunt. She found him kind but
thoughtless, industrious on occasions but unspeakably shiftless, not too proud, not very grateful and with no sense of
responsibility. His father of course spoke there. Yet the boy
was indubitably charming, never complained, and usually did
as he was told. Miss Susan found herself between two mindsshe had an impulse to work her fingers to the bone and thus
spare Alice's beautiful son the tussle with poverty which he
must know, and again a desire to speak and act forcibly and
drive him into an acknowledgment of what her loyalty to her
sister was leading her to do for a homeless, friendless lad.
Actually she struck a medium, made him keep clean, insisted



THERE IS CONFUSION                   39
on his regular attendance at school, took him to Sunday-School
and Church entertainments and induced him to work on Saturdays and holidays by refusing pocket-money to "a boy as big
as you."
She could not understand why he chose a job in a butcher's
shop. Doubtless Peter hardly knew himself. "I like to watch
the man saw the bones," he would have said vaguely. "I can
do it, too. I can cut up a chicken or a rabbit just as neatly!"



CHAPTER VI


T was Joanna who first acquainted Peter with himself.
But neither of the children knew this at the time. And
although Peter came to realize it later it was tnany years
before he told her so. For, though he went through many
changes and though these two came to speak of many things,
he kept a certain inarticulateness all his lifetime.
Joanna and all the older Marshalls went to a school in West
Fifty-second Street, one after another like little steps, with
Joanna at first quite some distance behind. They were known
throughout the school. "Those Marshall children, you know
those colored children that always dress so well and as though
they had someone to take care of them. Pretty nice looking
children, too, if only they weren't colored. Their father is a
caterer, has that place over there on Fifty-ninth Street.
Makes a lot of money for a colored man."
Peter, unlike Joanna, had gone to school, one might almost
say, all over New York, and nowhere for any great length of
time. Meriwether had stayed longest at Mrs. Reading's but
as, in later years, he more and more went off on his runs
without paying his bills, Mrs. Reading frequently refused to
let Peter leave the house until his father's return.
"For all I know he may be joinin' his father on the outside
and the two of them go off together. Then where'd I be? For
them few rags that Mr. Bye keeps in his room:wouldn't be no
good to nobody."
This enforced truancy was the least of Peter's troubles. He
did not like school, —too many white people and consequently,
as he saw it, too much chance for petty injustice. 'The result
40



THERE IS CONFUSION


41


of this was that Peter at twelve, possessed it is true of a large
assortment of really useful facts, lacked the fine precision, if
the doubtful usefulness, of Joanna's knowledge at ten. When
Miss Susan settled in the Marshalls' neighborhood and brought
Peter to the school in Fifty-second Street he was found to be
lacking and yet curiously in advance. "We'll try him," said the
principal doubtfully, "in the fifth grade. I'll take him to Miss
Shanley's room."
Miss Shanley was Joanna's teacher.   She greeted Peter
without enthusiasm, not because he was colored but because
he was clearly a problem. Joanna spied him immediately. He
was too handsome with his brown-red skin, his black silky
hair that curled alluringly, his dark, almost almond-shaped
eyes, to escape her notice. But she forgot about him, too,
almost immediately, for the first time Miss Shanley called on
him he failed rather ignominiously. Joanna did not like stupid
people and thereafter to her he simply was not.
On the contrary, Joanna had caught and retained Peter's
attention. She was the only other colored person in the room
and therefore to him the only one worth considering. And
though at that time Joanna was still rather plain, she already
had an air. Everything about her was of an exquisite perfection. Her hair was brushed till it shone, her skin glowed not
only with health but obviously with cleanliness, her shoes
were brown and shiny, with perfectly level heels. She wore that
first week a very fine soft sage-green middy suit with a wide
buff tie. The nails which finished off the rather square-tipped
fingers of her small square hands, were even and rounded and
shining. Peter had seen little girls with this perfection and
assurance on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia and on Fifth
Avenue in New York, but they had been white. He had not
yet envisaged this sort of thing for his own. Perhaps he inherited his great-grandfather Joshua's spiritless acceptance of



42


THERE IS CONFUSION


things as they are, and his belief that differences between people were not made, but had to be.
Joanna clearly stood for something in the class. Peter noted
a little enviously the quality of the tone in which Miss Shanley
addressed her. To other children she said, "Gertrude, can you
tell me about the Articles of Confederation?"  Usually she
implied a doubt, which Gertrude usually justified. But she
was sure of Joanna. The tenseness of her attitude might be
seen to relax; her mentality prepared momentarily for a rest.
"Joanna will now tell us,-" she would announce. For Joanna,
having a purpose and having been drilled by Joel to the effect
that final perfection is built on small intermediate perfections,
got her lessons completely and in detail every day.
It was at this time and for many years thereafter characteristic of Peter that he, too, wanted to shine, but did not realize
that one shone only as a result of much mental polishing personally applied. Joanna's assurance, her air of purposefulness,
her indifference intrigued him and piqued him. He sidled
across to the blackboard nearest her-if they were both sent
to the board-cleaned hers off if she gave him a chance, managed to speak a word to her now and then. He even contrived
to wait for her one day at the Girls' entrance. Joanna threw
him a glance of recognition, swept by, returned.
His heart jumped within him.                   Q"If you see my sister Sylvia,-you know her?-tell her not
to wait for me. I have to go early to my music-lesson. Shell
be right out."
Sylvia didn't appear for half an hour and Peter should have
been at the butcher's, but he waited. Sylvia and Maggie
Ellersley came out laughing and glowing. Peter gave the
message.
"Thanks," said Sylvia prettily. Maggie stared after him.
She was still the least bit bold in those days..,
*~ X,



THERE IS CONFUSION


43


THERE IS CONFUSION     43


-


"Ain't he the best looker you ever saw, Sylvia? Such eyes!
Who is he, anyway? Not ever Joanna's beau?"
"Imagine old Joanna with a beau." Sylvia laughed. "He's
just a new boy in her class. He is good looking."
Some important examinations were to take place shortly
and Miss Shanley planned extensive reviews. She was a thorough if somewhat unimaginative teacher and she meant to
have no loose threads. So she devoted two days to geography,
two more to grammar, another to history, one to the rather
puzzling consideration of that mysterious study, physiology.
Perhaps by now the class was a bit fed up with cramming,
perhaps the children weren't really interested in physiological
processes. Joanna wasn't, but she always got lessons like these
doggedly, thinking "Soon we'll be past all this," or "I'm
going to forget this old stuff as soon as I grow up." Poor
Miss Shanley was in despair. She could not call on Joanna
for everything. Pupil after pupil had failed. Her eye roved
over the room and fell on Peter's black head.
She sighed. He had not even been a member of the class
when she had taught this particular physiological phenomenon.
"Can't anyone besides Joanna Marshall give me the 'Course
of the Food?"'
Peter raised his hand. "He looks intelligent," she thought.
"Well, Bye you may try it."
"I don't think- I can give it to you the way the others say
it,"-the children had been reciting by rote, "but I know what
happens to the food."
She knew he would fail if he didn't know it her way, but
she let him begin.
This was old ground for Peter. "Look, I can draw it. See,
you take the food in your mouth," he drew a rough sketch of
lips, mouth cavity and gullet, "then you must chew it, masticalk I think you said." He went on varying from his own



44


THERE IS CONFUSION


simplified interpretation of Meriwether Bye's early instructions, past difficult names like pancreatic juice and thoracic
duct, and while he talked he drew, recalling pictures from those
old anatomies; expounding, flourishing. Miss Shanley stared
at him in, amazement. This jewel, this undiscovered diamond!
"How'd you come to know it, Peter?"
"I read it, I studied it." He did not say when. "But it's
so easy to learn things about the body. It's yourself."
She quizzed him then while the other children, Joanna among'
them, stared open-eyed. But he knew all the simple ground
which she had already covered, and much, much beyond.
"If all the children," said Miss Shanley, forgetting Peter's
past, "would just get their lessons like Peter Bore and Joanna
Marshall."
She had coupled their names together! And after school
Joanna was waiting for him. He walked up the street with
her, pleasantly conscious of her interest, her frank admiration.
"How wonderful," she breathed, "that you should know
your physiology like that. What are you going to be when
you grow up, a doctor?"
"A surgeon," said Peter forgetting his old formula and expressing a resolve which her question had engendered in him
just that second. He saw himself on the instant, a tall disk
tinguished-looking man, wielding scissors and knife with deft
nervous fingers. Joanna would be hovering somewhere-he
was not sure how-in the offing. And she would be, looking at
him with this same admiration.
"My, won't you have to study?" Joanna could have told
an aspirant almost to the day and measure the amount of
time and effort it would take him to become a surgeon, a
dentist, a lawyer, an engineer. All these things Joel discussed about his table with the intense seriousness which
colored men feel when they speak of their children's futures,



THERE IS CONFUSION


45


Alexander and Philip were to have their choice of any calling
within reason. They were seventeen and fifteen now and the
house swarmed with college catalogues. Schools, terms, degrees of prejudice, fields of practice,-Joanna knew them all.
"Yes," said Peter, "I suppose I will have to study. How
did you come to know so much-did your father tell you?"
"Why, I get it out of books, of course." Joanna was highly
indignant: "I never go to bed without getting my lessons. In
fact, all I do is to get lessons of some kind-school lessons or
music. You know I'm to be a great singer."
"No, I didn't know that. Perhaps you'll sing in your
choir?"
Then Joanna astonished him. "In my choir-I sing there
already! No! Everywhere, anywhere, Carnegie Hall and in
Boston and London. You see,. I'm to be famous."
"But," Peter objected, "colored people don't get any chance
at that kind of thing."
"Colored people," Joanna quoted from her extensive reading,
"can do everything that anybody else can do. They've already
done it. Some one colored person somewhere in the' world
does as good a job as anyone else, —perhaps a better one.
They've been kings and queens and poets and teachers and
doctors and everything. I'm going to be the one colored
person who sings best in these days, and I never, never, never
mean to let color interfere with anything I really want to do."
"I dance, too," she interrupted herself, "and I'll probably
do that besides. Not ordinary dancing, you know, but queer
beautiful things that are different from what we see around
here; perhaps I'll make them up myself. You'll see! They'll
have on the bill-board, 'Joanna Marshall, the famous artist,'-"
She was almost dancing along the sidewalk now, her eyes
and cheeks glowing.
Peter looked at her wistfully. His practical experience and



CHAPTER VII


SYLVIA and Joanna, walking through Sixty-third Street
on an errand for their mother, came upon groups of children playing games. Italians, Jews, colored Americans,
white Americans were there disporting themselves with more or
less abandon, according to their peculiar temperament.
"Look," said Joanna suddenly, catching at Sylvia's hand.
"See those children dancing! Wait, I've got to see that!"
Out in the middle of the street a band of colored children
were dancing and acting a game. With no thought of spectators they joined hands, took a few steps, separated, spun
around, smote hands sharply, and then flung them above their
heads. One girl stood in the middle, singing too, but with
an attentive air. Presently she darted forward, seized a
member of the ring:
"Say, little Missy, won't you marry met"
Their voices were treble and sweet, though shrill, and rang
with a peculiar, piercing quality above the street noises and
the sounds of the other children's games. The little players
were absorbed, enraptured with the spirit of the dance and the
abandon of the music. Joanna, too, was in a transport. She
watched them going through the motions several times.
Presently she caught all the words:
"Sissy in the barn, join in the weddin,
Sissy in the barn, join in the weddin'"
The child in the center here chose a partner. The others
sang:



48


THERE IS CONFUSION


"Sweetest 'il couple I ever did see.
Barn! Barn!
They stamped here.
"Arms all 'round me!
Barn!
The two children in the center embraced each other while
the rest sang:
"Say, little Missy, won't you marry met"
Then the two in the center pointed fingers at each other,
shrilling:
"Stay back, girl, don't you come near me
All them sassy words you say!
Then all:
Oh, Barn! Barn!
"Arms all 'round me!
Say, little Missy, won't you marry me?
Marry me?"
The last line came as a faint echo.
Joanna rushed forward: "I can play itl Girls let me play
it, too!"
The children stared at her a moment, then, with the instinct
of childhood for a kindred spirit, two of them unclasped hands
and took Joanna in. She outdid them all in the fervor and
grace of her acting. Two white settlement workers stopped
and looked at her.
"Come on, Joanna," Sylvia called impatiently.
Joanna came running, a string of the children after her.
She bade them goodby. "I must go now, but I'm coming
back sometime soon, to learn some more." She blew them a
kiss, "good-by, oh, good-by!"
She came up to Sylvia flushed and excited. "We'll play it
hbme, Sylvia! Wasn't it lovely and dear? Oh, I could dance



THERE IS' CONFUSION


49


like that forever!" She went almost all the entire remaining
distance on tip-toe.
Life in Joel Marshall's house was not always a serious discussion of the Marshall children's future. Like many of the
better class of colored people, the Marshalls did not meet with;
the grosser forms of color prejudice, because they kept away
from the places where it might be shown. This was bad from
the standpoint of development of civic pride and interest. But
it had its good results along another line. The children took
most of their pleasures in their house or in those of their
friends and devoted their wits and young originality to indoor
pastimes.
The Marshall house was a great center for this kind of thing,
and already Friday and Saturday nights were being regularly
set apart for the children's amusement and for the reception
and entertainment of the various young people who dropped in.
Joanna taught her dance. Sylvia and Philip and Alexanderwere willing pupils; Joanna was magnetic when in this kind of
mood. By the time Harry Portor and Maggie Ellersley arrived, they were all singing and stamping and twirling. Peter
came in late, held up by the butcher. "Had to go on an
errand for the grand white folks," he explained briefly.
"You'll wear out my carpet to-night for sure," said Mrs.
Marshall, but she loved the dancing as much as any of them,
and got up and took a turn. Joanna taught the tune to Peter,
who had a good ear, and bhe ran over to the old-fashioned
square piano and rattled it off to a wild thumping accompaniment.. When Brian Spencer came in, who even in those days
was pretty sure to be where Slyvia was-the fun was at its
height.  Peter, strumming a haunting, atavistic measure;
Joanna, dancing like a faun, instructed Maggie Ellersley.
"Now, Maggie, dance up to one of them. All right, take
Philip. You point your finger at him,-no both of you. Yes,
you're right, Peter. I forgot that. See, Phil, Peter's learned



50


THERE.E   IS CONFUSION~


it already. Here I'll do it by myself; all of you stand back."
She went through an elaborate pantomime, stretching out
her hands as though clasping a partner on each side. She
described an imaginary circle for the ring and ran into the
midst of it. An imaginary partner was before her and she
drew him in, pointed a slim, brown finger at him, rested both
hands on her young hips, pirouetted, sang to him gayly:
"Stand back, boy, don't you come near me!"
"My," laughed Brian Spencer, clapping loudly. "Can't
you see it all just as plainly? Really, Jan, you ought to go on
the stage as an impersonator, I don't believe you could be
beat." He was a tall dark boy with fine proud features that
looked chiseled. He and Alexander were home from college
for the Easter vacation.
Maggie Ellersley, as it happened, had been at a matinee the
week before. "It was vaudeville, Joanna, and there was an
actress there who took off different people and then she did
some Irish folk dances, but she couldn't hold a candle to you.
Too bad we're colored."
"It's not going to make any difference to me," said Joanna
determinedly. "Mother and father are willing. If I want to
go on the stage I'll get there."
"Joanna has the faith that moves mountains," laughed Peter.
"If anybody can make it she can."
Peter was a regular visitor at the Marshall home now. Ever
since that day four years before when he had told Joanna
of his.new-born determination to be a surgeon, he had spent
all his spare time near her. Miss Susan Graves did not like
this at first, not that she resented Peter's absence from her
so much, but he was a Bye and she did not choose to have him
associate too much with people whom she did not know. It
was no part of her plan for Peter to retrograde into the wreck
which Meriwether had become. She made it her business to
meet Mrs. Marshall at a church affair



THERE IS CONFUSION


51


"I think," said Miss Graves, eyeing Joanna's mother with
her clear, square gaze, "that my boy has spoken to me of you."
Mrs. Marshall looked puzzled. She thought this was a
Miss Graves.
"Peter Bye," his aunt continued, "he's my nephew. He
often speaks of Joanna Marshall."
"Oh, Peter! Yes, we like to have him at the house. The
girls find him great fun. So you're his aunt. You must come
to see us, too. Get him to bring you."
Miss Graves came and was impressed enough to let Peter
continue, though he would have continued without her permission. But Miss Susan, like Belle Bye nearly a century ago,
recognized atmosphere when she saw it. She was poor; Peter
was penniless. These were the sort of people her nephew
ought to know. She liked Joel's success, his pride, his air of
being somebody. She estimated, rightly the correctness of the
old-fashioned walnut furniture, the heavy curtains, the kidney
table in the parlor, the massive silver service and good linen.
It is true Sylvia changed much of this-except the silver-for
cretonnes and wicker chairs and gay rugs. But as Miss Susan
went to the house only a few times she did not know of this.
What she especially liked was the spirit of life, of ambition
and hopefulness that pulsed in that household. As Miss
Graves grew older, she began to see that her younger sister
had had some pretty good views after all, that it did not do to
stick to settled views,-"this for me, and that quite other
thing for you." The great things of life were for the taking,
it was true, but the result of deliberate planning. One did not
simply stumble into success. She had lived too long with
"the best white people" not to find that out.
Joel knew this, too, she realized. His whole life was devoted
to the mapping out of his children's future. His own and
Joanna's high enthusiasms had borne fruit. Of late the boys,
Philip and Alexander, had talked good solid man-talk.



52


THERE IS CONFUSION


"Colored people will be going big pretty soon. We'll have
to get in it, too, Pa."
Miss Susan decided this was a good place for Peter. Even
if she had the money to do so, she could not send him to a
school where he would meet with more inspiration in both
precept and actual concrete example. Already in the lesser
things this association was bearing fruit. Peter was too handsome, too graceful, too charming ever to be considered a
boor. But he had lacked finish, that fine courtliness of manner
which Miss Susan noted could convert a man of most ordinary
appearance into a prince. She had marked it among Jacob
Sharples' grandsons. Peter had not possessed a knowledge of
that delicacy, of that attention to trifles which, once gained
by a man, gives him passport everywhere. Miss Susan had
noticed, to her regret, the boy's tendency to let her carry
bundles, to look after even the heavier household duties. It
had never occurred to him if the weather were cold or stormy,
to offer to go errands for her. And his aunt, practical though
she was, shrank from calling his attention to these things. She
did not want him to think of her as exacting a return for her
kindness.
Now the Marshall boys were fine gentlemen. Joel had
made them so by teaching, as well as by his attitude toward
their mother and sisters. Joanna and Sylvia, particularly
Sylvia, helped the boys out with an occasional stitch, an occasional sewing on of a button. When Alexander was getting
ready for college, and was working at nights to help with his
expenses, Sylvia used to arrange sandwiches and milk for him
when he came in late. And Joanna had recopied'bis chemistry and history notes. These were only kind trivialities, but
the boys treated their sisters like queens. Philip was a little
like Sylvia, only neither as handsome nor as lithe and quick.
Alexander-Alec, Sandy, the girls called him variously-was
slower, like Joanna. Both boys were tall and well set-up.



THERE IS CONFUSION


53


The girls used to thrill a little-sisters to them though they
were-over the very real and thoughtful gallantry of these two
young men.
Miss Susan had remarked this quality as soon as she met
them. And she was beginning now to see its reflection in
Peter. And as he had beauty and great personal charm to
go with it, it distinguished him even more than the Marshall boys. She half way suspected a conscious assumption
of this on his part.
"But if he keeps it up, it will become part of him," she
thought to herself, "and then-girls be careful." She would
have been a little fearful for Joanna had she not noticed immediately in the young girl that indomitable desire for distinction. "Joanna will never fall in love with anybody,"
she said once to a common friend of herself and the Marshalls. "She'll never be able to take her mind off long enough
from her high falutin dreams."
Of course Peter had no conception why his aunt liked him
to visit the Marshalls. He was only too glad that she didn't
disapprove. He was seventeen now and beginning to know
himself in some ways pretty well. He liked Sandy and Philip
and Sylvia Marshall-liked them very well, and JoannaI It
could hardly be said that he loved her at this time. But he
knew that what he liked best of all in the world was to be
near her, to watch her, and to listen to her plans. She had
little shadowy gleams in her dark thick hair, glints of light
that ended abruptly in wavy blackness. He would like to
touch it. He remembered that he had once pulled her hair.
He had done it often! But now, though she was only fifteen,
he did not dare. Yet he often touched Sylvia's.
The night that Joanna taught them all the barn dance,
Peter maneuvered until he got Harry Portor at the piano, and
said:



54            THERE IS CONFUSION
"How does that part go, Joanna? Here I am in the center.
Then I take you in. Then —"
"Put your arms around her," said Sylvia. "That's it.
Now,Barn! Barn!"
He went home and fairly babbled to his aunt about it.
"Joanna is the most wonderful!"



56


THERE IS, CON~FUSION,


more could she want? Alas, in that dull soul unknown aspirations stirred, amazing questions took form. "Why, why,
why?" asked Mis' Sparrow in her own peculiar dialect, "are
all the sweetness and light of life showered on some and utterly denied to me?"
At present Mis' Sparrow had fastened a resentful eye on
Mrs. Proctor, the bride of the son of the "white folks" for
whom she worked. Edmonia the maid had told her about the
newcomer, and over the supper table she retailed it to Mrs.
Ellersley.
"She wan't nobuddy. Jes' a little teeny slip of ole white gal.
No money, no fambly, no nuthin'."
"Where'd he meet her then?" asked Mrs. Ellersley, uninterested but polite.
"Young Mr. Proctor's sister met her in boardin'-school,
poorest thing there," replied Mis' Sparrow, wiping a puckered
mouth with her apron. " 'Monia says Miss Dorothy sorry
for her and got her a job in her father's office. Mr. Harry was
jes' home f'um college; he saw her, took a fancy to her and
jes' married her. Jes' wouldn't listen to nobuddy a-tall."
"Don't it beat all," pondered Mrs. Ellersley, "how some
people have all the luck? Now if that kind of thing could
just happen to my Maggie."
Mis' Sparrow was unmoved by the irrelevant allusion to
Maggie. Where would she get such a chance?
"'Monia says she don't even love him. Liked some young
travelin' salesman she'd known all her life. 'Monia declares
she cries about him when she's by herself."
"What she marry him for then?" asked Maggie Ellersley,
aged twelve, and an interested listener.
"H'm child, wouldn't you do anything to get away f'um
hard work, an' ugly does an' bills? Some w'ite folks has it
most as bad as us poor colored people. On'y thing is they
has more opporchunities."



THERE IS CONFUSION


57


Maggie, visualizing the life which she and her mother endured, thought she probably would. She thought it again after
they had reached the tenement in Thirty-fifth Street where
the two of them lived. It was the famous "Tenderloin" of
those days and Maggie's spirit revolted with a revulsion of
feeling which never ceased to amaze her mother against the
sordidness of that place. There were three rooms. The front
one looked on the street and so was well lighted, but the other
two got light only from the air-shaft. Mrs. Ellersley, a widow
who considered herself fortunate to be one, rented the front
room out, usually to train-men (perhaps some of Meriwether's
acquaintances were among them), occasionally to a married
couple.
She and Maggie slept and lived in the two wretchedly ventilated rooms, in a perpetual gloom penetrated ever so slightly
by a flickering blue flame. A confusion of clothes, obscene
old furniture, boxes, stale newspapers was littered about them.
For some reason the rooms were everlastingly damp, perhaps
because, although rain could get down the air-shaft, the
sunlight never could. The rooms gave Maggie a constantly
eerie feeling, which in later more fortunate years she was
always able to recall by the sight of a gas-flame burning low
and blue.
They never, in those days, enjoyed a really bright flame.
Saving was Mrs. Ellersley's insistent because necessary fetish.
Maggie's tea was always weak, and never sweet enough. The
bread-baker's with holes in it, yesterday's, two loaves for
five cents-was always stale; the meat usually salt and sometimes tainted.
Out of it all Maggie bloomed-a strange word but somehow true. She was like a yellow calla lily in the deep cream of
her skin, the slim straightness of her body. She had a mass
of fine, wiry hair which hung like a cloud, a mist over two



58


THERE IS CONFUSION


gray eyes. Her lips, in spite of her constant malnutrition,
persisted unbelievably red. When she met excitement those
gray eyes darkened and shone, her cheeks flushed a little, her
small hands fluttered. And she was nearly always excited.
Something within her frail bosom pulsed in a constant revolt
against the spirit of things that kept her in these conditions.
"I will not always live like this, Ma-I'll get out of it
some way."
And her mother, though always scoffing, believed her with a
dreary hopefulness. "If there's a way to be found out,
Maggie'll find it."
Maggie found early that one avenue of escape lay through
men. They were stronger than women, they made money.
They did not give the impression of shrinking from spending
the last penny lest when that cent was gone there should be
no more. All the train-men liked her.' She could not get
much order in that abominable home, but she could and did
keep herself clean and neat. She washed her few garments
over night; she wound a stray ribbon, from a box of cigars or
a box of candy, through her hair. Some of the men, young
students, "on the road" during their summer vacations, used
to flirt with her.
"Hurry and grow up, Mag. When I get through school
I'll come back and marry you. How'd you like to live in
a little house-not like this!-in Washington?" Or Wilmington or Savannah as the case might be. "I'd give you pretty
dresses."
Poor Maggie. Her calla-lily charm visibly lessened in those
days when she opened her pretty mouth. She disclosed herself
then for what she was, a true daughter of the Tenderloin.
"Aw quit your kiddin!"
But she came slowly to realize that here was a way out.
If she could only grow up-if she were-say-seventeen.



THERE IS CONFUSION


59


She was persistently frail, else her mother might have put
her to work. As it was she was sent to school very regularly
-to save fuel and gas. Evenings she went to -the houses
where her mother worked and got her dinner.
On the night after she had listened to Mis' Sparrow's comments about young Mrs. Proctor, she sat thoughtful a long
time. She had sense enough to know that very often these
train-men stayed poor. They made pretty good money-they
did, too, in those days-but not enough to save their wives
from labor. Maggie did not want to wash and iron, to go
through the dreary existence which had been her mother's
when her father was living; he had run on the road.
Suppose, just suppose, there were some colored men who
were fortunate, successful, who had enough to eat, who could
give their wives help. Her mother knew of ministers like
that. There were colored doctors and lawyers somewhere.
Their very titles connoted prosperity.
"Ma," she spoke out of her brown study, "are there any
very rich colored men?"
"Not any very rich ones, I don't think," Mrs. Ellersley
replied thoughtfully, "but lots very well off, comfortable, with
servants to wait on 'em." She sighed.
"I'm going to meet one," said Maggie solemnly, and henceforth she thought, she dreamed of nothing else.
When she was fourteen young John Howe, who was occupying the front room, came down with a spell of typhoid fever.
He begged Mrs. Ellersley not to send him to the hospital,
and it was impossible to get him to his home in Oklahoma.
Hejhad enough money to see him through, and he put his
fortunes and his case into her withered hands. All the trainmen knew of Mrs. Ellersley's absolute honesty. She did what
she could for him, sat up long nights, gave him his medicine
faithfully, "counted out his money."



THERE IS CONFUSION


61


twelve men here for this room since you've been sick. The
rest of the rooms aren't much, but mother always keeps this
room tidy, and we're honest. They all know that. Never
missed a penny here, any of them. And they tell their friends
about us. Lots of times they tell Ma if she only had more
room she'd have all the roomers she wanted."
"But you've no furniture."
"We could buy on the instalment plan."' She had her
scheme all worked out. Clearly she had nursed her project.
"Mr. Howe, if you could just help us to begin."
He would, he told her, convinced by her earnestness. "What
exactly do you want me to do, Maggie?"
She wanted him to make his headquarters with them for
the year, and to pay as much as he could in advance. It
was still early summer. He must write and tell other men,
who would want rooms, and get a few of them to pay in advance, too. "Train-men won't mind that," she told him
shrewdly, "they'll like to know they have some place to go
to when they've cleaned themselves out at cards, or whatever it is they do. That will pay a month's rent, and leave
something, and with what we pay on this-this hole, we'll
have something to put on the furniture."
"I. guess you're right," said Howe, "I'll speak to your mother.about it."
But that was useless. Mrs. Ellersley was sure of her livelihood, her mere existence here, but she was doubtful about a
great venture. "Of course, for Maggie's sake I'd like to get
away."
"Oh, Ma, do-do, Ma," Maggie had pleaded in an ecstasy
of longing. "This is our one chance. You see if we don't
take this we'll never get away."
Fortunately she had Howe to back her. "She's right, Mrs.
Ellersley, and this is no place for a young girl to grow up.



62


THERE IS CONFUSION


You can count on me. I'll go look for a house, and see about
some furniture. I know plenty of fellows would be glad to
come."
Miraculously the scheme worked. It gave Maggie her first
insight into the workings of life. If you wanted things, you
thought and thought about them, and when an opportunity
offered, there you were with your mind made up to jump
at it.
Of course they were poor, but at least they were decent.
John Howe, staying for that year in New York, realizing more
and more how truly he was indebted to Maggie and her mother,
took a proprietary interest. He laid the cheap rugs, he set
up the cots, three in a room, he did mysterious jobs in the
bath-room which to Maggie was always so marvelous. He
bought tools and fixed window-cords which the landlord neg-lected. Maggie darned his socks for him, and he bought some
wall-paper, cheap but clean and virginal, a soft yellow, and
papered her square box of a room. A good job he made of
it, too. Another roomer at his instigation made a dressing
table out of a packing box which Mrs. Ellersley, re-invigorated, covered with scrim.
Gradually, word of her rooming-house spread among the
better class of transients. All her lodgers gave her their
mending to do, she washed for some of them, gave breakfast
to a few chosen spirits, and they paid willingly and well.
Maggie was in transports.. This was something like a
home. Of course, she had to attend school in the district.
Her mother took her as soon as matters were settled. She
looked fresh and neat in a dark blue serge dress trimmed with
black braid, the gift of melancholy Mis' Sparrow who in
turn had had it from young Mrs. Proctor. The dress was
worn, but it was whole, and Maggie had tacked a tiny turnover of white lace in the high collar.



THERE IS CONFUSION


63


She was assigned to the eighth grade. There were two of
them in the school. Her star was in the ascendant, for she
was assigned to the one of which Sylvia Marshall was a member. She would have fared differently if it had been Joanna,
for unless she were markedly clever, Joanna, who was intellectually a snob, would probably never have seen her. But Sylvia
spied her at once. She came over to Maggie at recess.
"You're a new girl, aren't you? Want me to show you your
way around?"
Maggie looked at the pretty girl, charming in a soft dark
red cashmere dress made with a wide pleated skirt. She had
on little patent leather, buttoned shoes with cloth tops, and
a big red bow perched butterfly fashion on her dark head.
Joanna wore her hair rather primly back from her face, but
Sylvia's was parted and rolled in waves over her ears, then
it was caught up and confined by the bow. She had a thin
gold bracelet on one arm. And about her hung the aura of
well-being and easy self-assurance which marked all the Marshall children.
"I wish you would," said Maggie.
Sylvia in those days was an ardent worker in Old Zion
Sunday School and had promised to help in a campaign for
more students. She told Maggie about it within the next two
or three days.
"My mother is going to entertain the new folks whom I
get to join. Will you join?"
Maggie would and so went to Sylvia's home as her mother's
guest.
She never forgot that home with its quiet dignity and atmosphere of prosperity. The Marshall children were a revelation to her. She had not known of colored people like these.
"At last I'm getting to know decent people," she told her
mother.



64            THERE IS CONFUSION
She had a passion for respectability and decency quite apart
from what they connoted of comparative ease and comfort,
though she coveted these latter, too, and meant some day to
have them.
"Two months ago," she thought, "I was still in that horrible
house on Thirty-fifth Street, and I got away. If that could
happen, anything could happen." She lay in her bed at nights
in the little yellow room and saw visions.



CHAPTER IX


SHE played her cards with an odd mixture of deliberation
and spontaneity.
"Maggie adores you, Sylvia," said Joanna.
"I think she does," Sylvia replied modestly. "I don't know
why, I'm sure. She certainly is nice to me."
Maggie's obvious admiration and Sylvia's naive acceptance
made the way easy. It is hard not to be nice to someone
who shows plainly that you are her ideal, your company her
supreme satisfaction. Maggie wore her hair like Sylvia's,
she copied when she could her manner of dressing, she spent
half her time at the Marshall house.
She saw the value of absolute honesty. No need to pose
when telling the exact truth brought what one wanted without
the strain of living up to a false position. The Marshalls
soon knew of Maggie's poverty, of the quick wit and determination which had brought them from that "dump-heap"Maggie's word-to the respectable and comfortable if still
cheap boarding-house. Sylvia used to talk to her mother
about it. Mrs. Marshall suggested that she hand over to
Maggie one or two of her perfectly good but discarded dresses.
But Sylvia objected with a very real delicacy. "She goes
to the same school I go to and to Sunday-School. I wouldn't
want the other children to see her in my things, she'd feel
so badly."
Her mother saw the justice of that. "I suppose I have
one or two things. There's that old brown Henrietta of
65



66


THERE IS CONWUSION


mine and the silk poplin. How'll she get them made over
though, Sylvia? Now don't expect me to help."
"Oh, mamma, you darling! You really are a brick! That
poplin is old rose, isn't it? She ought to look lovely in it.
I can fix them. You know how I love to fix things over and
Maggie knows how to sew on the machine. If she stayed
here three or four days, the rest of this week, we could finisi
them."
Mrs. Marshall agreed, Maggie's mother was consulted,
Maggie came in an ecstasy. Her first sojourn away from
home! And what a sojourn! Naturally neat though she was,
she learned of toilet mysteries, of rites of which she had never
dreamed. Nightly hair-brushings and the discovery that of
course each one had her own brush and comb!    Frequent
washings of both, talcum powders! Joanna the ascetic used
scentless ones, but Sylvia's were highly fragrant. These Maggie preferred. A bath every night.
"If you don't mind," said Sylvia, "I'll take mine first and
then you can stay in as long as you like. I hope that pig
Joanna hasn't used up all the hot water!'
Delicacies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Dinner at six
instead of the middle of the day! Mrs. Marshall complained
of a headache Saturday morning and Joanna took her breakfast up to her on a silver tray. Mr. Marshall kept box on
box of cigars in his den. Sandy and Philip wore superlatively
blackened shoes.
Maggie looked, listened, stored in her memory. The dresses
were a success. The rose poplin, being the prettier, was finished first; Sylvia had longed so to get her hands on it. Maggie put it on Saturday morning and stood in front of the
cheval mirror in Mrs. Marshall's room admiring her own and
Sylvia's handiwork, and herself with it.
"It's too pretty to wear in the house. Oh, don't let's have



THERE 'IS CONFUSION


67


to wait till to-morrow. Mamma, couldn't the boys take us
to the matinee? Maggie, have you seen Peter Pan?"
Maggie, it transpired, had seen nothing, had never been
inside a theater.
"What fun!" Sylvia's native delicacy hit on the right expression. "Fancy going to your first matin6e. Can you spare
us, Mother dear?"
The party could be arranged. Philip and Alexander expressed their willingness. Joanna did not care to go, to Maggie's astonishment, which increased when she saw how wonderful the theater was. But there were other things. The
girl never forgot the thrill that came over her as Philip took
her arm and led her over dangerous crossings, arranged her
seat and program for her, took off her coat. He held it during the performance and wrinkled it shamelessly. Sylvia
scolded him.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Phil."
"It doesn't matter," Maggie interposed happily. She was
beginning to have her good time like other people. Oh, God
bless John Howe!
The acquaintanceship progressed. All through the high
school the two were nearly inseparable. It is true, Maggie
sought Sylvia more than Sylvia sought her, but on the other
hand Maggie's presence was taken as a matter of course
by the Marshalls and their friends. Maggie went to parties
with Sylvia, the two escorted by Brian Spencer and Philip.
Often she slept at her house after the parties and at Christmas time and week-ends. Once, when Mrs. Marshall took
Joanna to visit relatives in Philadelphia, Maggie stayed with
Sylvia a whole month.
In her junior year in the high school she had a long talk
with Mr. Marshall. Of course they were still poor, the house
just kept them in comfort. Maggie had become addicted to
the wearing of good clothes. Her mother was getting older.



68


THERE IS CONFUSION


They needed help from time to time. If Mr. Marshall would
assist her in getting some work. She was young and strong
and willing.
"No, no, Mr. Marshall!" she objected as Joel-they were
sitting in his office-spoke of a loan and reached for his checkbook. "Not that! When could I ever pay you back? No,
I mean work, real work. I could take orders, count the silver,
look after the napery, pay off the men if you'd care to trust
me."
Perhaps a man of another race might have stopped to
consider such a proposition coming from the lips of a young
and dainty girl. He might have been suspicious and realized
that his younger son was working in the business with him
just then and the boy and girl would be bound to be thrown
together. But colored men of old Joel's type are obsessed with
the idea of a progressing younger generation. "They must
advance," thinks the older man, "I must do all in my power
to help them. This is my contribution to mine own."
Joel taught her his simple system of bookkeeping and installed her. She proved herself efficient, willing, and-her
mother's teachings spoke here-absolutely honest. Her energy
and interest were surprising. "You might think it was her
own business," said Joel. He had no desire to see either her
or any of his children become caterers, but he did like to see
a job well done. Philip was the only one who had evinced
any interest in the business, and that was only during his
last year before entering college. He had to make some extra
money somehow-both he and Sandy had a healthy dislike
of burdening their father with their college expenses-and
since he had to work he preferred to spend his time and energy
in his father's interests.
His chief work consisted in directing his father's various
squads of waiters. He met them at the house where Joel was
catering, started them off, checked over necessities, looked



THERE IS CONFUSION


69


after the thousand details which lent to Joel's service the perfection that so justly brought him fame. Maggie often accompanied Philip on these trips. Sometimes she went to one
house and he to another, and he would call for her and take
her home. She pondered deeply over the possibility of these
meetings.
He was usually jolly, unsentimental, almost brotherly.
Maggie took care to follow his lead. But to her great surprise she was beginning to be conscious of a deep affection
for him. At first she had only yearned for respectability and
comfort, and Philip represented such a convenient short cut
to her heart's desire. But now things were different.
Sometimes when they came home quite late he would take
her arm and the two would walk slowly and silently down
the strangely quiet streets. A curious little sense of intimacy
used to brood over them at times like these. Philip would
laugh a little nervously.
"Awfully jolly being out late like this by ourselves, isn't it,
Maggie?"
She would nod him a smiling yes. "Some day," she thought,
"he must say more."
Her studies, her work and these trips with Philip took up
most of her time just now. She and Sylvia of course still saw
a great deal of each other and once in a while went out together. She went to the theater still more rarely, or to a
church festival with Henderson Neal, one of her mother's
boarders. A mysterious tall brown figure of a man, twenty
years older than Maggie and a thousand years older in experience, he caught and not infrequently held her attention. He
had lived with them two years, paid his bills regularly, asked no
questions and vouchsafed no explanations.
Maggie wondered what he did. Whatever his occupation,
it certainly paid him well. More than once she had seen him
display without ostentation a huge roll of bills, which ap



70


THERE IS CONFUSION


parently was static in bulk. His speech was often ungrammatical, but so deliberate that one thought he must be speaking correctly. He had a rather grand air, and listened to
both Mrs. Ellersley and her daughter with a somewhat ponderous attention. Maggie thought he was rather interesting for
such an old man-he must be nearly forty! She was a little
afraid of him, though, and decided it would be rather unpleasant for any one who chanced to make him angry.
Once he met Sylvia and Maggie on the street and offered
to take them to the matinee. His interest was clearly in
Maggie but he politely included her friend. Sylvia later told
Philip about it.
"I hope you didn't go," he replied quickly.
"No, I didn't, Maggie didn't, either. But there's no reason
why I shouldn't have. She goes with him sometimes."
"But that's different. Maggie's known different people from
any you've ever known. She can take care of herself."
"What's the matter?" Joanna asked, putting her head in
the door. "What's old Phil so excited about?"
"You might just as well hear this, too, Jan. I won't have
you and Sylvia going about with a man like Henderson Neal.
Maggie can go with men that my sisters can't afford to associate with."



72


THERE IS CONFUSION


for the arduousness otherwise entailed in the observance of
the Sabbath. There was always company. Joel, a caterer,
knew "how it ought to be done." Then there were the four
children to dress and get off, and the constant oversight of
them when they came home to see that they did not break
the thousand inhibitions which made the day sacred.
"I used to hate it so," Sandy laughed. "Remember, Phil,
how we used to try to find those awful sailor collars-I think
they're called Buster Browns now-and see if we couldn't
hide them or mark them up before the next Sunday? Mother
must have had a million of them, for we were never able to
exhaust her supply."
"Weren't you sights!" Sylvia teased. "You were fat, Alec,
and your face rose large and round over your collar like a
full moon. You had two eyes set away back from your fat
cheeks and you had to bend your head way over to look
down- "
"And you wore a grayish-brownish-greenery-yallery round
straw hat," interposed Joanna.
"Don't you talk," Philip jeered at them, "I remember two
poke bonnets, reddish, with fuzzy stuff sticking up over
them."
"Astrakhan. Yes, I remember," Sylvia told him. "Weren't
they awful? And the deadliness of Sunday afternoon! You
boys sitting around knocking your feet against the rungs of
the chairs. Such glooms!'"
"Yes, and you," said Sandy, assuming a solemn countenance.
"Looking dejectedly out of the window, your face propped in
your hands!"
"Joanna was the only one who got anything out of those
Sundays," Philip mused. "I can see her now flat on her
tummy reading the life of some exemplary female."
"Notable women of color," laughed Joanna. "I adored
Sunday."



THERE IS CONFUSION


73


Certainly no flavor of those past days spoiled the Marshalls' enjoyment in these later years. Rather remarkably
the whole family still went to church, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall
from years of long habit, Sylvia because she rather liked to
please her mother and because it amused her to have Brian
Spencer, whom church-going bored to the point of agony, obey
her wish that he should go. Sandy, now in the real estate business, thought it gave him standing in the community.
Philip's reasons were various. Chiefly he went to church
as he went to many meetings, because he was interested in
seeing groups of colored people together. He had a strong
desire to sense the social consciousness, for he was trying to
learn just what stirred mass feeling and into what channels
it could be directed. A minister of the poorest type was an
unfailing source of study to him. How would this man sway
the people? And what would he ask of them once he had
them ready to listen to his will? Philip always dreamed
of a leader who should recognize that psychological moment
and who would guide a whole race forward to the realization
of its steadily increasing strength.
He dreamed many dreams sitting crosswise in the far corner
of his pew, his back partly against the wall, partly against
the seat, his lean, brown, slightly haggard face bent forward.
He had already the somewhat remote glance of the thinker,
though his firm chin pronounced him no less the man of
action. Maggie Ellersley, sitting across the church from him,
watching him a little covertly under her drooping hat brim,
used to think he looked like a man who would take what he
wanted.
"If only he knew what he wanted," she half sighed.
Joanna was the soloist of the choir these days, sole raison
d'gtre of her church-going. Her mezzo voice full and pulsing
and gold brought throngs to the church every Sunday.
"There is a green hill far away," she sang, and the puzzled,



74


T\HER~E IS CONEFUSIONN


groping congregation turned its sea of black and brown, yellow
and white faces toward her and knew a sudden peace. Even
Philip stopped his restless inner queries.
At times like these Peter Bye felt his very heart leap toward
her.
Joanna with her cool eyes and steady head cared almost
nothing about this. She never saw herself in this scene. Always in her mind's eye she was far, far away from the church,
in a great hall, in a crowded theater. There would be tier on
tier of faces rising, rising above her. And to-morrow there
would be the critics....
The Sundays passed thus week-end to week-end. One of
them stood out in Joanna's memory. Philip, a Harvard
junior, was home on his summer vacation, but he and Sylvia
and Sandy had gone to visit their mother's folks in Philadelphia.
Joanna, Brian Spencer, Peter, and Maggie Ellersley stepped
out of church and walked down the torrid street. It was
early June, but the weather was that of August.
"Our children are growing up," said Mrs. Marshall to Mrs.
Ellersley, lingering a moment in the shady vestibule. "See
how tall Joanna and Maggie have grown. They were the
littlest things!"
Mrs. Ellersley followed the group with a wistful eye. Of
late she had begun to have some idea of Maggie's unspoken
desires. She wished it were Philip instead of Brian walking
down the street with her daughter. She was very tired, tired
enough to die, but she could not, she felt, leave Maggie alone,
unplaced in the world.
The four young people turned the corner and prepared to
separate.
"Brian is coming to the house for dinner," said Joanna.
"You coming, Maggie and Peter?"



THERE IS CONFUSION


75


Maggie had an engagement for the afternoon. Peter refused, too, sulkily, to Joanna's vast satisfaction.
"Jealous," she thought with some pride. It was an exhibition with which she seldom met. Most of the young men
of her acquaintance were a little afraid of Joanna with her
intent and serious air. "High-brow" they called her and she
knew it, liked it, too, though it had its inconveniences.
"Peter's mad," she laughed as the two moved off, "because
I told him I was going to the benefit concert with you, Brian,
and so he couldn't come to-night."
"Sorry if I spoked his wheel," said Brian, "but you just
have to take pity on me, Jan, I'm so lonely without Sylvia."
"Of course. Isn't it funny that he doesn't realize that? He
thinks you are making up to me. As though I would come
between you and Sylvia. Great chance I'd have."
"About as much as I'd have, trying to come between you
and Peter. Not that I know anything about you, Janna.
Heaven only knows what you mean to do with the boy. But
I wouldn't want to face Peter, if I were aiming to be his rival.
Wonder what he'll do when he goes to the University in
Philadelphia. What's he going off there for, anyway? Can't
he do just as well here?"
"The penalty of being colored," said Joanna soberly. "He
can get much better hospital work in Philadelphia. Of course
he could take his pre-medic work here, but he thinks it best
to begin where he plans to finish."
"How long will he be away?"
"Forever and ever, six or seven years, I think. Of course,
we both have relatives in Philadelphia.  His great-uncle
Peter, for whom he was named, is still there, you know.
Peter's counting on living with him. It will save expense."
"Six or seven years!" said Brian disregarding anything else.
"Golly what a wait! It would kill any girl but you, Janna."



76


THERE IS CONFUSION


"Sylvia didn't die while you were in Harvard," Joanna returned meanly.
"Not much she didn't! But she kept me in the back of her
head, I'll swear. While you with your singing and dancing
and your wildcat schemes of getting on the stage! Better
stick to your own Janna, and build up colored art."
"Why, I am," cried Joanna, astonished. "You don't think
I want to forsake- us. Not at all. But I want to show us
to the world. I am colored, of course, but American first.
Why shouldn't I speak to all America?"
"H'm, I suppose you're right. You ought to win out if anyone can. You work hard enough, Janna. You're eighteen
now, aren't you? Well, you've got a good ways to go. How
old is Peter?"
"Twenty. He lost a lot of time when he was little. That's
why he's so late entering college.
"Well look here, what are you going to do with him?"
"I may not have a chance to do anything with him, Mr.
Busybody."
"Phew, isn't it hot! Thank goodness here's the house. Run
along and get your brother-in-law a long, cold drink."
He stayed after dinner-they had it on Sundays at threeand talked away the rest of the afternoon to Joel in the long
dark dining room.
"It's cool here," said Joel, handing him a cigar. "Light up
and tell me how's Harlem?"
"Great, sir. It's the place for colored people. Let us get
you a house up there. Pick you up something fine in One Hundred and Thirty-first Street." Brian, too, had gone into real
estate as Alexander's partner.
Joel rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
"Don't know but what I might. This neighborhood's gone
down. Let me see your house."



THERE IS CONFUSION


77


"Yes, sir, I will. Has-er-Sylvia said anything to you
about me? I'm getting along pretty well now, sir."
"What should she say? Here Joanna, come take this lovesick boy off my hands!"
Joanna came, serene and cool, a little prim in her pale
yellow dress and soft floppy hat of tan chiffon. She handed
Brian his Panama.
"I'm ready, Brian."
Joel stopped them for a moment, clapped the boy on the
shoulder. "It's all right as far as her mother and I are concerned, Brian."
The two went off and heard a gracious, mellow-voiced
woman fill a hall with sound that made them forget the heat.
"My collar's wringing wet, and I never thought of it. Wonderful how music can make people forget."
"Even color," said Joanna thoughtfully. "Did you see that
white woman next to me edge away when I sat down? But
when she heard me humming after it was over, she leaned over
and asked me if I knew the words."
"I wondered what you were talking about. Awfully jolly
of you to have taken pity on me to-night, Janna dear. You
marry Peter and all four of us will go to these concerts and
sit in the gallery and come home praising God from whom all
blessings flow."
"It certainly sounds nice. Only we mustn't forget Philip.
Don't ring the bell, here's the key."
He took it. "All right about Philip. Maggie is fond of
music, too."
Joanna, in the act of entering the door, stepped back and
faced him sharply. "What's Maggie got to do with it?"
"Well, she and Phil. They've always paired off together,
haven't they? Just like you and Peter, just like Sylvia and
me."
"She wouldn't dare," said Joanna fiercely. "Why, Philip



78


THERE IS CONFUSION


he's going to be somebody great, wonderful, a Garibaldi, a
Toussaint! And Maggie, Maggie's just nobody, Brian. Why,
do you know what she's taking up? Hair work, straightening
hair, salves and shampoos and curling-irons."
"Joanna, you're an utter snob. I always knew you looked
down on people unless they were following some mad will o'
the wisp. Maggie's as good as any of us. Why look here,
she graduated from high school with Sylvia. You can't look
down on her."
"Sylvia's my sister, thank you. She's Joel Marshall's
daughter. She has background, she knows good music and
pictures and worth while people."
"You talk like a silly book. What's that got to do with
it? And, anyway, you can't stop it now."
"What's the reason I can't?"
"Well, good Lord, it must be as good as settled. Why
Maggie thinks-only to-day-   Oh-here, I've said enough.
Thanks awfully for a nice evening, Jan -"
"What'd she say, Brian?"
"Well, you know we were coming home from church and you
and Bye were ahead and I said, 'Look at the lucky pair.'"
"Yes, never mind me. Well, well?"
"And she said, 'You miss Sylvia, don't you, Brian?' 'You
bet,' I told her.
"And she looked at me-you know how Maggie can lookshe said, 'Just like I miss Philip, I guess.'"
Joanna grew visibly taller. "You let her say that, Brian
Spencer?"
"Well, how could I stop her? Of course she misses Phil.
And quit acting 'offended pride,' Joanna. Heavens, doesn't
Sylvia sometimes do sewing?"
"Oh, but that's different, she creates, she's an artist -"
"Artist your grandmother!  Sleep it off, Janna.  Good
night." He went off, striding down the quiet street.



THERE IS CONFUSION


79


Joanna closed the door and crept quietly up to her room.
Seated in a wicker arm-chair in a stream of gold summer moonlight, she spent a long time in deep thought.
Maggie and Philip! Maggie! Of late she and Philip had
had many a long talk. He'd lean against the mantelpiecehis restless fingers caressing a little black statuette:
"Jan, I'll talk to you, because you've always cared about
this kind of thing. Raise a monument-more-enduring-thanbronze sort of business, you know. When I graduate-by the
way, I think I'll be elected Phi Beta Kappa next year-I've
got a scheme, I've got a plan that will work all right. Father
will be proud of me, you'll see. And you, too, old girl, you've
always been a bright beacon light. You stick to this stage
business, you'll win out. There'll be a twin star constellation.
'The well known Marshalls, Joanna and Philip.' We'll make
the whole world realize what colored people can do. Nothing
short of 'battle, murder or sudden death' is to interfere."
He, too, had been bitten by the desire to make the most
of his life. And now here was Maggie Ellersley.
"What ambition has she?" Joanna asked herself fiercely,
forgetting to measure the depth of the abyss of poverty and
wretchedness from which Maggie had sprung. "She shan't
spoil my brother's chances."
Rushing over to her little desk, she pulled out a piece of
tan stationery and began a note.
"Dear Maggie —"



CHAPTER XI


P   ETER had accompanied Maggie as far as the subway
station. "You won't mind if I don't go all the way
home with you, Maggie? Fact is, I don't feel so weil
to-day, so if you'll excuse me-" His voice trailed indeterminately.
Maggie smiled at him nicely. She was oddly happy at this
moment. Linking her name with Philip's, as she had, gave
her an odd sense of freedom, of sureness. "And Brian didn't
seem at all surprised," she kept thinking to herself over and
over.
She answered out loud, "That's all right, Peter. Go home
and rest. I'm going to be in the house only a minute, anyway." She looked at him meaningly. "I guess both of us
have a lot to think of. Good-by." She flashed down the steps,
looked back; a second later a slender golden hand waved to
him from the gloom of the subway.
"Now I don't know what she meant," thought Peter, pushing his hat back from his hot forehead, and immediately turning to another idea. "I'd like to punch that fresh Brian's
head. Oh, Janna, how could you go off with him?"
Down in the subway train Maggie sat smiling a little inanely. Of late, her feeling for Philip had taken a definite
form; she wanted, as always, desperately to marry, and to
marry well in order to secure for herself the decent respectability
for which those first arid fourteen years of her life had created an almost morbid obsession. But she knew now that
80



82


THERE IS CONFUSION


But she looked anything but somber as she ran to the
door at the whirr of the motor.
"Going, Ma," she called back. Mr. Neal climbed out of
the car and helped her in.
He didn't look so old-elderly-to-day, she thought to herself, noting the straightness of his flat back and the smooth
bronze of his closely shaven cheek. Evidently his beard was
very strong and this had lent hitherto a somewhat heavy cast
to his face. But to-day he was shaven to the blood. Maggie
was used to studying men. It was a legacy from the old
days, when failure to analyze a prospective roomer's appearance might jeopardize a week's rent.  She noticed Neal's
hands at the wheel, powerful and sinewy with broad square
finger-tips. He was still baffling, but not so bad, she thought.
"Of course, not like Philip, but nice enough to go around
with, and this is a dandy car."  She looked at him again
sideways. He caught her glance.
"Thinkin' I ain't so bad maybe, Miss Maggie?"
She blushed, confused, not so much at his catching her eye
as at the completeness with which he had read her thought.
"You certainly look nice in that suit, Mr. Neal. It's different from what most men wear, isn't it?"
"Likely as not. I picked it up in London last time I crossed
the big pond."
"You've been to Europe?" asked Maggie all ears.
"Yes to England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy. They
was a time," he said in his deliberately incorrect way, "when
I thought I'd stay in them parts forever, but I come back.
Used to valet for a rich white fellow. Took me everywhere
with him. Wanted to carry me to Africa lion-hunting. But
I quit him cold. If you want to hunt lions, go to it. Me,
I'm a-goin' t'stay right here."
He spoke with a heavy emphasis on the last word which
lent a curious whimsicality to his speech.



THERE IS CONFUSION


83


"This is the first time you've ever talked about yourself,
Mr. Neal. Tell me some more, it's mighty interesting."
le had been everything from a farmer to a chauffeur, he
told her, confirming her idea that his present occupation was
concerned with the manipulation of cars.
"And I've been a lot of places and I've seen a lot of people.
But you don't want to hear about me, Miss Maggie. They
ain't nothing in me to interest a little lady like you. Now, on
the other hand, seems to me, you might make real interestin'
talkin'."
He had a nice smile, Maggie thought.
"There isn't much to tell," she smiled back at him. "There's
just my mother and me. I'm twenty-one and I've been out
of school three years. I work in the office of Mr. Marshall,
the caterer; you know him?"
"Know of him, Miss Maggie, know of him. Son's a realestate agent, ain't he?"
"Yes. Well, I'm  a sort of overseer-bookkeeper. In my
spare time I'm taking up a course in hair-dressing. You know
there's a Madame Harkness who's invented a method of softening hair, and of taking the harshness out of your folks'
locks." She laughed at him. "You know I think there's a
big future in it. It ought to mean a lot to us. Everybody
wants to be beautiful, and every woman looks better if her
hair is soft and manageable."
"Reckon you don't need to use no such preparation, Miss
Maggie."
"No, I don't, fortunately, but I'll be glad to help those that
do. I love to see people look nice; like to look nice myself."
"You sure do, you're like a little yellow flower, growin'
in that house." He gave her a keen level glance whose boldness was softened by his serious manner.
"Let's stop talking about me," said Maggie with sudden
confusion. "Don't you want to hear about my mother?"



84


THERE IS CONFUSION


"Well, not as much as about some others."
"Anyway, she's been a wonderful mother. My father died
when I was about eight, and left us nothing. Mother has
been hard put to it at times. That's why I want to learn the
hair-trade. I want to set up a business for myself some day.
If I succeed, both mother and I can live on easy street."
"You'd ought to be living there now. A delicate little girl
like you's got no business having to worry her pretty head
about taking care of herself." He bent on her a long considering look. "There's many a man would be willing to
take that job off your bands. I bet I know of one." An odd
bashfulness seemed to descend upon him.
"Perhaps he's going to propose," thought Maggie innocently enraptured, "wouldn't that be great?" She pictured
Sylvia's surprise when she should tell her. His clumsy circumlocution, his heavy deference, delighted her. Philip of
course was wonderful, but he was inclined, like all the Marshalls, to be a little superior. Well, why shouldn't they be?
She sighed.
Her silence seemed to put an end to his sentimental maunderings, for he began to talk about the car, explaining its
mechanism. Once,, too, he turned and swore fluently at a
motorist who passed him too closely. At the sudden passion
which convulsed his face Maggie drew back, a little frightened.
He noticed it, and immediately ironed out the lines of anger.
"You must forgive me, Miss Maggie. It made me so angry
to think that that fool might have caused an accident which
would have injured you."
She thought with the ignorant pride of a young girl that it
would be very easy for her to manage him. Shortly after that
they turned around and came home. Maggie was glad when
they reached the house, for she had many things to think about.
Shutting off the motor, he followed her into the hall and they



THERE IS CONFUSION


85


stood there a minute, his powerful dark figure looming over
her.
She thanked him prettily. "It was very nice of you, Mr.
Neal. You've been most kind to mother and me." As she
sped lightly up the stairs she forgot him completely.
Her windows were open and a full moon flooded her room
with light. "Oh, Philip if I only knew how you felt," she
murmured, getting up and leaning out the window, gazing
into the still, hot air. The people next door were in their
back yard; one of their boys was playing an accordion. A
little thin tinkle of voices floated up to her. How content
other people seemed!
Her mind was feverish-she had concentrated so on her
other desires, a decent home, a reasonable education, the means
of making a little extra money. It seemed to her she couldn't
find the strength to focus the flame of her ambition on Philip's
kind but immobile attitude. He was so uncomprehending.
She turned back to the room again and stretched her arms
to the shadowy wall.
"If you'd only say one word, Philip. I'd wait forever."
It was the uncertainty that sickened her spirit. "Yet," she
thought, growing suddenly cold, "suppose I should be made
certain-the wrong way. Perhaps you've met a girl in Philadelphia."
She determined the suspense was best. "You've been my
hope so long, if you should fail me what would I do? Besides, I love you, Philip."
She lay half the night, very still and very wakeful in her
white iron bed. The morning brought back her old sanguineness, she was to have a very full day; until early forenoon
there was work in Mr. Marshall's office, and in the late afternoon Madame Harkness' Method of Hair Culture claimed
her.
She came home, hot and deliciously tired.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


"There's a letter for you," her mother told her. "Wash
your face and eat your supper first. I want to get through's
quick as I can. Mis' Sparrow and me, we're going to a meeting.'
Maggie spied the letter in the gloom of the hall. It was
from Sylvia probably; her heart hoped it was from Philip.
But she put the thought away from her as too audacious.
"Now just for that," she told herself whimsically, "I won't
let you touch that letter till after supper."   Smiling, she
washed her face and changed into something cool and old
that she could lounge in later up in her room, while she read
Sylvia's letter.
Supper over, the dishes washed and her mother started in
the direction of Mis' Sparrow's residence, Maggie went for
her letter. Even in the half gloom she descried with a sudden
pang that the superscription was unfamiliar. "Not from
Philip, not even from Sylvia. Well, why should they write
me?" she chided herself bravely.
In the waning but clear light in her room she could see
plainly that the letter must be from a stranger. Yet there
was something vaguely familiar about the writing after all.
She slit the envelope.
"Dear Maggie: [the letter ran]
"You'll be surprised to get this letter, yet something tells me I
should write it. It's about you and Philip. ['What's this?' said
Maggie, startled.] I have learned, Maggie, that you are taking
Philip's kindnesses to you too seriously, that perhaps you are thinking
of marrying him.
"I think you ought to know that such an arrangement would not
be at all pleasing to our family, nor would it be good for Philip. I've
often heard my mother say that only people of like position should
pnarry each other, and I hardly think that would be true in the case
of you and Philip. Then you must consider the future. My father
is very ambitious for us and lately Philip has shown that he means
to embark on a real career. You can see that a girl of your lowly



THERE IS CONFUSION


87


aims would only be a hindrance to him. Philip Marshall cannot
marry a hair-dresser!"
The childish cruel words ran on:
"Then, too, I am sure he does not care for you in the way you
care for him. Don't you go around sometimes with a Mr. Henderson,
or somebody like that? Sylvia met him somehow and Phil didn't
like it and raised a big fuss. Sylvia told him that you knew him
and went out with him and Philip said 'That's different. Maggie
Ellersley can do things that my sisters mustn't do.' That doesn't
sound as though he had any serious feeling for you, does it?
"I guess this will be sort of hard for you to read, but I believe"
[Joanna wrote virtuously] "that some day you will thank me for
these words.
"Wouldn't it be just as well if you didn't see him for some time
after his return?
"Yours,
"JOANNA MARSHALL."
"P.S. Papa is thinking of buying a house in One Hundred and
Thirty-first Street, in Harlem, you know. So we may move after
Sylvia and the others come back from Philadelphia. Papa would
still keep his office in Fifty-ninth Street. That puts us pretty far
away, so if you shouldn't come up so often, no one would think anything of it."
Maggie folded the letter carefully and put it on her mantelpiece. Then, fully dressed as she still was, she lay down on
her bed.
"You poor idiot," she thought to herself, "you simpleton,
you fool, why should the Marshalls want you? They're rich,
respected!  Mr. Joel Marshall-you see the name at the head
of every committee of colored citizens, and you are nobody,
the daughter of a worthless father, and a poor ex-laundress!"
Her mind dwelt briefly on her mother. "Poor Mamma, she
expected so much of me! Yet if Philip really cared about
me, he wouldn't care a rap if they did object." She remembered then his slighting words.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


"I hate him," she said fiercely, "and Joanna and her everlasting ambitions and the pride of all of them. Why, you're
just a beggar to them." She resumed her merciless self-attack.
Presently she began to cry great, scalding tears that burned
her cheeks and hurt her throat. At eleven o'clock she heard
her mother's step and forced herself to an aching quiet. About
midnight she realized that her head ached, that her throat
was so dry and parched that it almost rasped.
"To think I should care like this," she told herself. "Oh,
Maggie, Maggie, they're proud, can't you copy their pride?"
There were some lemons on the table in the dining room,
she remembered. At least she could ease her tortured throat.
Hot though it was she put on her felt bedroom slippers, so
that her step on the creaking stairs might not disturb her
mother.
The quiet lower rooms struck her with their awful solemnity,
added to her woe. She sat there at the dining room table, one
hand clutching the forgotten lemon, the other flung on the
red-checked table cloth, above her dark bowed head.
Two conflicts were raging within her. A two-fold stream
of disappointment overwhelmed. Not only had Philip not
made love to her but he had despised her, not considered her
the peer of his sisters. And how was she to mend her precarious fortunes? She was not strong, her mother was aging;
suppose, before she got on her feet, she should fall back into
the old hateful abyss. As it was she would never enter Mr.
Marshall's office again.
Her shame and despair heavy upon her, she buried her face
deeper on her arm. Some one seemed to say, "Miss Maggie!"
She imagined it, she knew, but even if it were real she did
not want to lift that heavy, heavy head.
A powerful but kind hand strove to lift it for her. She
looked up then, a blinking figure of misery in the flickering
gas flame.



THERE IS CONFUSION


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THERE IS CONFUSION     89




"But Miss Maggie, t'aint ever you. Was you asleep orwas you crying?" Henderson Neal had come in, and spying
the light in the dining room had come to investigate.
She blinked at him stupidly.
"Little Miss Maggie, what's happened to you? You ain't
in trouble?"
"In awful trouble." Her lips shaped the words stiffly.
His mind, accustomed to the ways of men, jumped to one
dread conclusion. "You mean some good for nothin' feller's
took advantage of you?"
She didn't understand him at first. "What?  Oh, that!
No, of course not!" A spasm of horrible amusement crossed
her tightly drawn features. "He-he wouldn't touch me."
She broke into passionate yet stifled weeping. Her mother
must not hear her.
Neal's face twitched. He picked her up in his steely arms,
sat down in an old cavernous morris chair and held her back
against him like a baby.
"Tell me about it, Miss Maggie; some of them tony fellers
bothering you to marry them?"
The supposition was balm to her spirit, but she had schooled
herself to honesty. "No, not that-one of them, oh, he never
knew-I hoped, oh, Mr. Neal, you see I wanted him to
like me - "
"And he doesn't, and he's been leading you on? The
damned skunk. I'd like to kill him."
"Don't say that. He was just being kind. He'd probably
be all right if he ever thought about me. You see, it's his
sisters, his sister," she corrected herself, "she doesn't consider
me good enough."
"Well, what's she got to do with it? Can't the feller speak
for himself?"
"That's just it, I used.to go to see them, they don't come
to see me. If the sisters don't want me, there's no way I can



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reach him, particularly since he isn't interested. I had just
hoped that if he kept on seeing me, some day he would grow
to like me."
Neal was nonplussed. This was a puzzle.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Oh, I don't know. And I'm losing my job now. I got
it through them."
"I see." He sat silent, studying her a moment. "Look
here, Maggie, whyn't you marry me? I'm old and I'm rough
and you see I ain't no book-learnin'. But I can take care of
you-you and your mother, too, and I can dress you pretty,
like you'd ought to be, and with money and fine clothes you
can do a little lordin' on your own."
She hated to offend him. He was so kind. "Mother would
never hear of it," she quavered for lack of a better answer.
"You don't have to let her know about it," he said, encouraged by her failure to refuse him flatly. "Ill get a license in
the morning and we'll slip out after she goes to work. You
won't be sorry. I'll be kind to you Maggie-girl. I've always
wanted you to give me a chance." He added a cunning afterthought.
"Show these stuck-up friends of yourn, and show 'em quick
that you don't have to go beggin' for favors. There's others,
yes, not a man that comes into this house that wouldn't be
proud to marry you.>'
She began to toy with the idea. Marriage with Neal was
not what she wanted, but it represented to her security, a home
for herself and her mother, freedom from all the little nagging
worries that beset the woman-who fights her own way through
the world. Perhaps she had aimed too high. This was the
sort of person with whom she had grown up; he would not,
because he could not, look down on her lowliness. On the
contrary, he would place her on a pedestal.
"I'll think about-it, " she promised him finally.



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91


But he knew if she did not take him now, she would never
take him. She knew it, too.
He set her gently in the chair, and knelt in front of her,
barring her escape with his powerful body.
"Listen, Maggie, marry me now, to-morrow. We'll go to
Atlantic City for a few weeks, and come back and go to housekeeping. I don't have to live here. I just stayed on, first
because it was clean and your mother was honest and then
because I liked you. I ain't no lawyer, nor doctor, nor in none
of the fine positions your friends hold, but I handle a good
bit of money and I'll get you everything you want."
He did have money, she knew that. She supposed she ought
to find out exactly how he made it. But of course he was
honest. And anyway she was too tired, too weak to bother.
She could feel his strong will impinging on her own, beating
hers down.
"I'll do it, Mr. Neal."
"My name's Henderson, Maggie. You will, you mean it?"
"Yes, to-morrow. But I ought to let my mother know."
"Oh, no, she might object-mothers hate to see their
daughters leave them. But after she sees how well fixed and
happy you are, she won't mind."
"I guess you're right. I —I don't see how I can ever pack.
I'm so tired." Her figure slacked weakly against the chair.
"You don't need to. Just wear something dark and quiet.
We'll get everything you want in Atlantic City, or maybe
Philadelphia."
"No, no —not in Philadelphia, we won't stop there now,"
she told him feverishly.
"All right. Now run up to bed. Kiss me, Maggie."
She gave him her cold, stiff lips.
"Good girl! To-morrow at ten. You ain't foolin' me?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Neal!"
"Henderson's my name. Good night, little girl."



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THERE IS CONFUSION


Shaking, she got up to her room to lie vacant-eyed across
the bed, watching the darkness deepen, shade into gray, vanish. The sun came bringing a new day, to her a new life.
She wrote her mother a note, then dressed herself carefully in a little tan poplin suit, a small brown hat and a white
veil. "Brides wear veils," she thought to herself numbly. "Oh,
I didn't think I'd be a bride like this!"
Well, it was too late now. At quarter of nine she went down
stairs. Her mother had left long since. Presently she heard
a taxi drive up and Neal, heavy but immaculate, got out. He
was coming for her. She walked stiffly to meet him; they
entered the cab together and were whirled away.
"This was marriage," she thought, murmuring some words
later to a Justice of the Peace. They entered the waiting taxi
again and drove to the Pennsylvania station. A surprising
number of the red-caps seemed to know Mr. Neal-her husband. Well, of course, of course why shouldn't they? They
walked down the steps past car after car. Neal ushered her
finally into a drawing-room. She had never dreamed of traveling like this. As the train pulled out Neal hailed a passing
waiter. "Bring us something to eat as soon as possible."
He sat down beside her, immaculate in a gray suit, gray
tie, carefully brushed low shoes. His tan overcoat rested in
the corner of the seat. He put his arms around her.
"Poor, sleepy, frightened Maggie," he said tenderly.
She burst into sharp, strangling sobs, burying her head
against his shoulder.
So she left New York, weeping, to return to it one day dryeyed but with a bitterness that was worse than tears.



CHAPTER XII


EALLY, Joanna, you ought to treat me better. You
know I'm staying in New York just on account of
you!"
"How do you want me to treat you, Peter?"
"Oh, hang it all. Why can't you be nicer to me? When
Brian comes to see Sylvia she runs to meet him, puts her
arms about his neck."
"But Sylvia and Brian are engaged. You and I are just
friends."
"Just friends! Joanna, have a heart. What do you think
I spend all my spare time with you for? You know how
I feel."
Joanna raised a slim, protesting hand. "None of that,
Peter! You come to see me because both of us are interested
in the same things. Each of us is going to be an artist in
different ways. What other girl is there in New York who
would let you talk to her about the joys of surgery?"
"What other girl would want me to?"
Joanna, looking at the long brown figure lying full length
on the grass, thought it highly improbable that any other girl
would. She had seen other girls in the company of Peter, and
watched quite without jealousy their ways with him. She
rather prided herself on her own aloofness from such tactics.
Of course, some day she might let Peter talk to her about
things other than work and art, and she might answer him, but
at present the big things of life must be arranged. Love was
93



94


THERE IS CONFUSION


an after consideration, she felt, and as far as she knew she
meant it.
It was a Saturday afternoon in July and the two were in
Van Cortlandt Park. Peter was to go to school in Philadelphia in the fall, and it was important for him to earn as
much money as possible for his expenses. He might have gone
with a group of other boys to one of the watering places and
worked in a hotel. But that took him too far away from
Joanna. Ragtime was coming into vogue then, and Peter
proved himself an adept at it. The butcher shop was of
course a thing long since of the past.
"Here's where I put my gift of strumming to some use," he
laughed to Joanna. "You ought to see how glad they were
to take me on at that cabaret."
"I hope you won't learn anything you shouldn't in that
atmosphere," she had answered primly.
"Oh, of course I won't," he returned, thinking how amazed
she would be if she ever looked down from her pinnacle long
enough to understand what life really was. He would have
liked her to see that cabaret with its jostling crowds and
blaring lights, and the host of noisy good-hearted dancing
girls. He tried to give her some description of it. But Joanna
turned away.
"Men and women are like that, just the same," he protested. "Everybody isn't living on the mountain-tops like
you, Janna. I can't live there of my own accord myself.
That's why I haunt you so because you do keep me on the
heights, dear." She liked that.
"But just the same," he resumed, rolling over on the short
grass like a lithe handsome animal, "all the big things of life
smack of the earth. Your poet has to eat, or he can't write
poetry. Well, so does the commonest laboring-man. The queen
has children, in agony, Janna, just.like the poorest charwoman.
And love is the-the driving force for both of them."  He



TH1ERE IS CONFUSION


95


mused a little. "Love is the most natural and ordinary thing
in the world."
But Joanna didn't believe that. "Love is a wonderful, rare
thing, very beautiful, very sweet, but you can do without it."
"Not much you can't. Better not try it, Joanna. You have
to found your life on love, then you can do all these other
things."
"Don't talk like a silly, Peter. You know perfectly well that
for a woman love usually means a household of children, the v
getting of a thousand meals, picking up laundry, no time to
herself for meditation, or reading or. "
"Dancing! That's through poor management. Marry a
man who understands you, Janna, and he'll see that you have
time for anything -you want. Where is such a man? Behold
him!" He struck his chest dramatically.
"Peter Bye! How you talk!"
"All right, I'll choose something else. Tell me why is it
that though I've elected to stay in New York in all this hot
weather just to be at your side, I see less of you than at any
time since I've been coming to your house."
"Does seem queer, doesn't it? It must be because I have
so much work to do. I am taking extra singing lessons from
Brailoff now. And my dancing takes up a lot of my time;
my classes come at such inconvenient hours, 7:30 to io:oo
three times a week."
"That is bad. Funny time to give dancing lessons. Where'd
you say you took them?"
"At Bertully's."
"Bertully's! That's in Twenty-ninth Street, isn't it? How'd
you ever make it? I didn't suppose a colored girl got a chance
to stick her nose in there."
"She wouldn't ordinarily. Bertully refused Helena Arnold
last year. 'I'm sorry, Mees, but the white Americans like not
to study with the brown Americans. Vair seely, but so.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


I am a poor man, I must follow the weeshes of my clients!'"
Joanna shrugged her shoulders, spread her hands.
"You're a born impersonator, Jan. I can see that little
Frenchman now. How'd you ever get in, then?"
"Helena and I went back this year and asked if he would
take a separate class of colored girls, if we got it up for him.
He was very decent, said he'd be glad to. So we got up a
class of eight, he only asked for six. Of course, we had to
take his hours."
"Who are in it besides you and Helena?"
"Oh, all our crowd." She named the daughters of several
prominent colored men, a physician, a lawyer, a journalist, a
real-estate man among them. "There's Gertrude Moseley,
Vera and Alice Manning, Elizabeth Beckett, Sylvia, Helena,
and I."
"That's seven."
"Oh, yes, Sylvia meant to ask MVaggie Ellersley."
"H'm, she had other things in her head without bothering
about fancy dancing, hadn't she? Funny how she went off
and married without telling any of us about it, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Joanna uneasily.
"You'd have thought she'd have let old Phil in on it. I
wonder if they had a falling out of any kind! Philip seemed
rather hard hit when he heard the news."
"Not a bit of it. Why should he be?" Joanna spoke stoutly.
But her tone belied her convictions. She hadn't forgotten
Philip's expression the day Sylvia had come rushing in with
the astounding news:
"What do you think? I just met Mrs. Ellersley. Maggie's
married-married-think of it! She ran away with that man
at her house, that Mr. Neal. And they're going to live in
Philadelphia."
Philip's haggard face had turned a trifle more wan, Joanna



THERE IS CONFUSION


97


had thought. "Has she written to you, Sylvia?" he asked
her quickly.
"Not a word. I can't imagine why she said nothing to me
about it. She must have planned it for ages. If that isn't
the funniest!"
Later Joanna heard Philip asking his mother if she were
sure she had given him all the mail that had come for him
while he was in Philadelphia. Still later he had announced
his intention of teaching summer school in South Carolina.
"Fellow whose place I'm going to fill is sick. They've been
at me a long time to come. I think I ought to go, father. It
will give me a chance to see the South."
Joanna's throat constricted a little at the thought of Philip's
look, his general listlessness. She wished she hadn't written
that letter. Though that couldn't have brought about the marriage. People don't arrange to be married over night. As
Sylvia said, it must have been on Maggie's mind long since.
And then, anyway, Philip couldn't really have cared for a
girl like Maggie.
"I don't believe Philip was the least bit interested in Maggie," she voiced her thought to Peter. "Well, anyway, Mr.
Bye, that's why my company is so scarce. Goodness, what are
you frowning about?"
"Well, I'm mad to think you swallowed that Frenchman's
insult. To think of your taking lessons from him after that!"
"But, Peter, he didn't insult us. He can't help this stupid
prejudice. 'In my country, Mademoiselle Marechal,'-he always calls me that-'you'd be an honor to any class.' He says
I've got a great future. That if there's anything that will
break down prejudice it will be equality or perhaps even
superiority on the part of colored people in the arts. And I,
agree with him."
"But to be set apart like that!"
"What do I care?" asked Joanna, the practical. "You've



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THERE IS CONFUSION


got to take life as you find it, Peter. The way I figure it is
this. If all I needed to get on the stage was the mastery of a
difficult step, I'd get there, wouldn't I? For somehow, sometime, I'd learn how to overcome that difficulty."
"You bet you would."
"Very well, then. Now my problem is how to master, how
to get around prejudice. It is an awful nuisance; in some parts
of this country it is more than a nuisance, it's a veritable
menace. Philip says he's going to change all that some day.
First, I'm going to get my training up to the last notch, then
I'm going to watch for an opportunity and squeeze in."
"You'll never get it."
"Oh, yes, I will. Some white people are kind, some of them
are so truly artistic that they'll put themselves to great
trouble for the sake of art. Look at Bertully. It works him
much harder than it-does us to hold those extra classes."
"Bertully's one man in a thousand. Besides, he's a foreigner. Where'll you find a white American like that?"
"You blessed pessimist. I know of people like that already.
That's how Helena Arnold got to Bertully in the first place.
A Miss Sharples-why, they're the people your Aunt Susan
works for, aren't they? Your aunt told Miss Sharples about
Helena, and Miss Sharples took her, herself, to Bertully."
"That was awfully decent, I must say. Of course, the
Sharples are Philadelphia Quaker stock. Not that that makes
much difference. The white Byes were Quakers, and see how
they left us stranded, though my father told me old black
Joshua Bye practically coined them their money. Not many
people like those Sharples."
"There doesn't need to be. The point is there's one. Miss
Sharples' family, by the way, may have been Quakers, but
there's nothing Quakerish about her.  Helena says she goes
with the. Greenwich Village group all the time, and for all
their craziness, they've got some mighty big ideas."



THERE IS CONFUSION


99


"Can't get anything to eat, if you're colored, down in their
dinky old restaurants."
"Awful, isn't it? Well, we'll let some other colored person
pound away at that side of it. Me, I'm going to break
into art. The public wants novelty, and I want fame. I've
got to have it, Peter."
"You talk about going on the stage as though you had a
signed contract in your hand. How'll you get the stagepresence?"
"I'm to go on a recital tour next fall among colored people.
I'm used to singing in the choir. If I can stand before them
I can stand before any audience in the world."
"Yes, we are mighty critical."
"I should say so. Get up, Peter Bye. We've got to go
home."
They started on the long trip back.
"But see here, Joanna," Peter pleaded when they reached
the house, "you will give me a little more time, won't you?
I don't have to work in the morning, you know. And I don't
work Wednesday nights. Promise me that, won't you?"
"Yes," said Joanna, her heart warming to his glowing
beauty. "We'll remember this summer, Peter, the last before
we go off trying our wings for further flights."
That was an enchanted season. Peter used to call for herin the morning, and the two would go off exploring. Joanna
liked the foreign quarters, but she had never cared to stand
around too long in those teeming, exotic streets. She was
too conspicuous, attracted too many inquiring glances. With
Peter she felt safe to stand for long moments watching the
children play, to enter queer dark shops, to taste strange
messes. Sometimes she spoke to the women about their
dresses, their headgear. One Spanish woman, grown used to
the sight of this dark American girl and the good-looking boy



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THERt IS' CONFUSION


'at her side, took them into her quarters one day and showed
Joanna how she dressed her hair. Another time she taught her
an intricate Spanish dance.
"I'm going to do a dance representing all the nations, some
day," Joanna told Peter.
They planned for Wednesday nights very carefully at first,
but gradually as the torrid weather increased, Joanna's desire
for the theater and other indoor forms of amusement yielded
to the desire to be cool at any cost. Central Park claimed
them then, and later Morningside, since it was just a few
moments' stroll from the Marshalls' new house.
Morningside was usually crowded. The seats were always
taken when they arrived.
"I wonder what time the people come," Joanna murmured,
But they didn't mind. The grass, the sloping hillside, was
good enough for them. Joanna would sit down, her dainty
summer dress spread around her, her splendidly poised head
turned at first so she could see the passers-by. She was forever
studying types, and eyed them with a grave deliberation.
"You'll get your head knocked off yet, Joanna," Peter would
remonstrate, "staring at people so."
He liked it better when later on in the evening she turned
toward the slope of the hill and looked down at the city,
laughing in its myriad twinkling lights. Her face at that
time took on a grave wistfulness which he could not analyze.
Joanna herself could not define the feeling which prompted
that expression.
Peter, leaning on his elbow, would lie beside her, his curly
black head bent toward her, one slender brown hand touching
her dress ever so lightly. He would have given the world
to believe she was thinking about him, but he knew she was
not. He would have been astounded if he could have dreamed,of the maze of her thoughts. Joanna was really most human



THERE IS CONFUSION


101


at moments like these. Through her mind was floating a
series of little detached pictures. She saw a glittering stage,
Peter, herself, some little children. She felt a hazy, nebulous,
mystical joy.
Peter adored her at moments like these, but he was afraid
of her, too.
One night she astonished him. "Peter," she said suddenly,
"sit up. So. I'm tired. I've had a hard day. Do you mind
if I rest my head on your shoulder?"
Would he mind if she offered him a king's estate?
He was too ecstatic, too-yes-scared, to speak. He sat
as she directed, he stretched his thin tense arm around her
fine young body. He even put up one hand and pressed her
head closer against his shoulder, touched her hair, let his fingers
trail ever so lightly over her cheek. Joanna in his arms!
Joanna!
She felt him trembling. "Am I too heavy, Peter?"
He could hardly articulate, but she heard his ardent "no"
and moved imperceptibly closer.
His breath stirred her thick, dark hair. He let it caress
his chin. Its soft heaviness was a revelation to him, a rapture.
She lay so quietly against him he thought she must be
asleep. So he whispered, "Are you asleeep, Joanna?"
"No," she whispered back, "only very, very tired.""Oh, Joanna, Joanna," he breathed, "be tired forever."
Somewhere out of the heavenly silence, a girl's voice, a
foreign voice, broke into song high and shrill. Russian, Peter
thought. It was just a snatch, poignant and sweet, that died
away leaving a faint lingering sadness.
She put her head back then. She opened her dark eyes
and looked full into his.
Their lips were so near, so near. In a second he had pressed
his against hers, briefly yet with passion. She sat up and



102           THERE IS CONFUSION
drew a little away from him, dazed. But he put his arms
around her and held her close. Presently they walked home,
speechless. When they came to an arc-light, they looked at
each other's faces, eager to study and to reveal these new
selves. Their glances met and clung with a sweet enchantment.
Something leaped, something fluttered within their hearts, like
a fettered, struggling wing. And it was beautifully, it was
magically, first love!



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THERE IS CONFUSION


nights when he tossed sleepless on his bed, dreaming fragrant
dreams and seeing golden visions, she was sleeping the perfect
sleep of healthy weariness.
The last days were hard for her, however, as they were
for Peter. For Joanna was doomed by her very make-up to
a sort of perpetual loneliness. Sylvia had her own interests,
she had Brian and many, many friends. She was the most
popular of all the Marshalls. Alec and Joanna had never
been thrown much together. Philip, once her great confidant,
was usually away from home. And on his return he was apt
to relapse during these days into a rapt sadness.
It followed, then, that while Joanna was Peter's sweetheart,
his heart's dear queen, Peter was at once her lover whom she
didn't need very much-at least she did not realize that needand more than that her companion and friend whom she
needed greatly. The prospect of the days stretched long and
dreary before her. Even the concert tour, a remarkable booking for one so young; did not entirely console her.
The two talked about it on the day before Peter left for
Philadelphia. They were in Van Cortlandt Park in a little
tangled grove. It was noon and the September sun streamed
down on them making the green wooden bench on which they
sat pleasantly warm. But the leaves about them were going
a little sere; in the shade the air felt chill, and the sunshine,
though warm, was thin and white.
" 'The summer is ended.' "  Joanna quoted softly; she
sighed. Peter looked at her, there were tears in her eyes.
- "Dear, beautiful Joanna," said Peter,, and his own beautiful
face was full of the -woe of parting, "how can I leave you
to-morrow? Janna, don't send me away, tell me I'm not to
go." He put his arms around her and she clung to him.
"Peter, you must go, you must, really. We-we can't go
on like this. We've got to prepare ourselves while we're young
for the future."



THERE IS CONFUSION


105


"Yes," said Peter and his ardor chilled a little at the touch
of her cool practicality. But a moment later her light touch
rekindled him.
"You love me, Janna? You know I love you?"
"Yes, Peter dear, but we mustn't say anything more
about it."
"I know, Joanna, I'm not going to worry you any more
just now, but you'll let me speak sometime?"
"Yes, oh, yes! "
"Dearest girl! Kiss me, Joanna."
She touched his lips with a light, lingering kiss. He looked
at her, his face haggard with his gusty, boyish passion.
"Ah, Joanna, I'll never forget that kiss."
Neither would she, her heart told her. It was the first time
she had ever kissed him.
They walked through the deserted park, their arms frankly
about each other, like children. The dry grass and brittle
leaves crackled beneath their feet, the air hung over them
like a thin, misty veil. Joanna sang a bit from an old Italian
song:
"If from Heaven we could but borrow
One day longer of fond affection
It would lessen then our sorrow,
Give fresh joys for recollection."
She hummed a line here, then her voice rose again in the
thin, shimmering air:
"-The future, dark and lonely!
Dearest Loved One, dearest Loved One
Parting makes these joys so dearl
Ah! -"
"Don't, Joanna; it's too sweet. You'll make me cry."



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"I know it. Oh, Peter, go away and come back great and
when you come back, speak to me."
She went with him to the train next morning and to his
amazement no less than her own, broke down and sobbed into
her handkerchief.
He bent over her. "To think of your crying for me, Joanna!
Good-by, good-by, my sweet. Remember, I'll be back
Christmas."
He vanished through the gates, was borne out of her vision.
A strange exaltation possessed him. He was sad, but his sadness was as nothing to his joy, his sense of satisfaction.
Joanna loved him. She had been unusually capricious since
that night in Morningside Park. But now he was sure of her.
He smiled steadily from Manhattan Transfer Station to North
Philadelphia.
His cousin Louis Boyd met him at Broad Street Station
and took him to his great-uncle Peter's in South Eighteenth
Street. The old man almost cried over him.
"You're Meriwether's son, but you're more like your grandfather, Isaiah. He was darker than you, but he held his head
high like yours, and you're going to do what he wanted his
son to do. It's good to see you, boy."
He registered at the University the next day, consulted catalogues, met professors, wrote a glowing letter to Joanna. By
the end of the week he was desperately homesick. He would
have gone over to New York if he had not been so ashamed,
and if he had not been expected to dinner at Louis Boyd's.
"Tell you what's the matter with you, fellow," said Louis
when Peter had told him of his nostalgia, "you want to meet
a few girls. We'll start out after dinner."
Peter did not think this would help much. He wanted
Joanna, though he said nothing about that to Louis. Astonishingly, however, the cure worked.
Louis seemed to know half of colored Philadelphia. "Mighty



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"N. B. These x's are kisses." [There was a long string of them.]
His letters to Joanna reacted to his own advantage. He
felt he must be able to tell her truthfully of his success in his
studies, of his ability to fit into this new life. Joanna was
interested in him with a deep personal interest such as she
had never exhibited before, and he meant to keep it alive.
These were with one exception the most wholesome, most
formative days of Peter's life. He had youth, he had inspiration, he had the promise of love, with much hard labor to
keep it.
Many of the colored boys lived in West Philadelphia. They
had a fraternity, and though according to their laws he could
not be taken in during his freshman year, it was plain that
this honor would be extended to him as soon as he became a
sophomore. He was pretty well liked, and was constantly
receiving invitations to spend the night across the river. One
or two of the boys lived in the dormitories and he was frequently offered a chance to see something of this side of
college life.
But his steadiness surprised himself. He got his meals in
a restaurant on Woodland Avenue, worked faithfully in the
Library between classes, and completed the rest of his assignments at night in his Uncle's sitting room. The old fellow
loved to see him there. He pictured in Peter the restoration
of the Bye family in Philadelphia.
To eke out his scanty bank account, he played three nights
a week in a dance hall at Sixteenth and South Streets. Saturday
afternoons he did track work. Friday and Sunday he spent
at Arabelle Morton's or at Lawyer Talbert's on Christian
Street. This latter and his family consisting of two sons and
two daughters, were the relatives with whom the Marshalls
stayed on their visits to Philadelphia. He found them very
enjoyable. One of the boys was an undertaker but with a



zoo


THERE IS CONtFUSIO)N


and a house party. I'm asking you now, Peter. Isn't it great
being grown up?"
"You bet. Which of these functions comes off first?"
"Sylvia's engagement party."
"So she and Spencer are actually going to pull it off.
They've waited a long time, haven't they?"
"Yes, that's because Brian insisted on getting a good start
before he married. Sylvia would have married him the day
after they became engaged. But I think Brian's right."
"They're both right, but Sylvia's way is the best. That's
the only attitude for anyone to have towards marriage. I'm
afraid you lack it, my child. You want to begin with a
mansion and three cars."
"You mean thing!  I don't care about money as money
one bit and you know it. But I do care about success. And
a house or a car usually implies that. Any girl likes her man
to look well in the eyes of other men."
"This man's going to look well." He yearned toward her.
"Kiss me, sweetheart."
"Sir, you insult me. People shouldn't kiss unless they're
engaged."I
"Then be engaged to me, dearest Joanna. Great Scott, are
-we here?"
Joanna evaded him after that. Christmas was Tuesday,
but as he had saved his cuts for Saturday classes, he had
managed to come away the preceding Friday night. On
Christmas morning he caught her before daybreak. They had
arranged to go to an early service in a large Episcopal church
where Joanna had recently been engaged as a soloist. He was
waiting for her in the dark hall.
"Good! There you are, Peter. We must fly."
"Not until you've told me you love me."
"I love you, Peter. Come on."
'No, sir, put your little arms around my neck. So. Now



THERE IS CONFUSION


ill




say, 'Dear Peter, I love you and I'm going to marry you.)
"Oh, I can't say that. Let me go, Peter."
'4Not one step." He held her so close that she had to poise
herself against him, breathlessly, exquisitely. A clock in the
house boomed five.
"Peter, ask me to-night."
"I'm asking you now. Answer me this minute, Joanna.
Not one step will we stir till you do." He shook her gently.
"Say it, darling."
She still had her arms around his neck. "Dear Peter," she
began, her voice breaking a little, "I love you and I'm going
to marry you."
"You've got a smudge on your face," he told her solemnly.
She burst into hysterical tears at that. "I never thought
I'd become engaged with a smudge on my face."
"I know you didn't. I'll try to overlook it." He got down
on his knees and kissed her hands. "Darling Joanna, I'll love
you always.
Between them, they wiped away the traces of the smudge
and of her tears. Then they found their way out, and walked
through the dark silent streets singing "Joy to the World,"
like a pair of Christmas waifs.
The lovers found it hard to see each other. There were too
many things going on for that. Peter could have found time,
but Joanna, he realized with a pang, seemed to think of nothing
but her dance. When she wasn't at a party, or dressing, she
was at a rehearsal. The affair for the Day Nursery was to
come off New Year's Eve.
Monsieur Bertully's seven pupils danced, swayed, pirouetted.
Their slim silken limbs flashed and twinkled through a series
of poses and groups until one thought of an animated Greek
frieze. At the end the seven girls appeared as school children.
Joanna as their leader was teaching them a game. Peter
watched her flashing in a red dress across the stage, dancing,



CHAPTER XIV


POOR MAGGIE! How relentlessly and completely had
her illusions flown!
She had enjoyed the ride to Atlantic City. Her husband had surrounded her with magazines, fruit, candy, even
-books. She had had a wonderful dinner and when they got to
Atlantic City, he took her to a very respectable, clean boardinghouse. It was nice to be protected, she realized that. And,
when, the day after they were married, he gave her seventyfive dollars, and told her to send part of it to her mother, her
spirits, which had not yet recovered from the shock of the past
two days, rose considerably.
She thought Mr. Neal remarkably kind and gentle. And he
was always clean. On the whole, while she was not the least bit
in love with him, she considered he did pretty well, though she
did wish he knew a little more about English grammar. His
deliberate incorrectness made her ashamed of him and because
he was so kind to her, this feeling on her part made her a little
ashamed of herself.
He was the soul of generosity. Besides giving her money,
he had taken her to two of the best stores, and bought her
whatever she wanted. He would have liked to buy her a com-plete outfit, but the prices made her demur.
"Wait till we get to New York again. We can do better
there." But she did let him buy her a few things: There
were a blue silk dress, a white satin skirt, two or three smart,
delicately tinted blouses, a wonderful wrap, light but warm;
tan and white shoes and stockings.
II4



THERE IS CONFUSION


115


Atlantic City was a revelation to her. She had literally
never been out of New York City, except once to a funeral in
Brooklyn in company with the lugubrious Mis' Sparrow. This
fairyland by the sea with its colored lights, its human kaleidoscope, its boardwalk, its shops! She did not know the world
held such as these.
But she was more interested in the Atlantic City that lay
on the north side of Atlantic Avenue. There were many cottages here, a score of restaurants, a good drug store, all of them
patronized by colored people. They were the kind of people
Maggie wanted to know, she could see that at a glance. In
the restaurant which she and her husband most frequented,
she sat and watched the happy, laughing faces. They were
like one big family although they came from Washington, /
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. She realized then how completelyY
she had depended on the Marshalls and their immediate entourage. Cut off from them, she had no way of meeting these
people, she possessed no background.
Some of the visitors seemed to know others hailing from
the most remote places. One woman said, "Oh, there's Annie
Mackinaw, she's been in San Francisco for five years you know,
I must speak to her." Surely, Maggie thought, her husband
must have met some of these people somewhere. But although
an occasional man -nodded to him, even came up and spoke,
not one brought over his wife or daughters. The women looked
at Maggie, a little curiously; once she thought as she passed
a large party at a table that they stopped talking with that
queer suddenness which made her sure they were discussing
her. They looked at her clothes, appraising them, but she
could never catch their direct gaze.
She sought to find solace in the theaters, of which she was
very fond. This was an opportunity, plenty of leisure and a
willing companion ready and able to take her whenever and
wherever she wished. But Atlantic City theaters make no



16


THERE IS CONFUSION


secret of their unwillingness to serve colored patrons. After
'J being told at the ticket office that there were no more balcony
seats, only to see them calmly handed out to the next white
person in line; after enduring an evening in the poorly ventilated gallery with a feeling of resentment rankling in her
breast; above all after seeing how these mischances awoke
her husband's passionate but futile anger, she desisted. He
had a terrible, devastating temper, which left her speechless
and cowering even though it was not directed toward her.
Better do without the theater forever, she thought, than be
the cause of awakening his savage wrath.
She returned to her survey of the colored visitors. Her
husband found some friends and went off on mysterious trips
with them, from which he returned amiable and pleasant and
usually with some small gift for her. In his absence she sat
on the piazza watching happy groups go by, or sat alone in
the pavilion far down the boardwalk, where the colored people
bathed. In time she came to know the characteristics of certain
groups, could even tell from what city they came.
Philadelphians were not as a rule as strikingly dressed as
the folks, say, from Washington, but they had a better time.
They seemed bound by some kind of tie, family, perhapswhich made it possible for them to group together incongruously but with evident enjoyment. Old women and young
girls, young girls and elderly men, young men and almost
middle-aged women, laughed and bathed and gossiped like
brothers and sisters. These were the hardest to approach; it
was impossible to invade their solidarity. They made the status
of the outsider very clear.
The Baltimore people were somewhat like these, only gayer.
They were clannish, too, but more willing to let down bars.
Clearly they were a cross between the Philadelphians and
the gay Washingtonians who played about in very distinct
groups, superb in their fashionable clothes and their deep
assurance.



THERE IS CONFUSION


117


Maggie's landlady introduced her to one girl, a Miss Talbert
from Philadelphia, who came up on the piazza one day to r
inquire for a former boarder. She was brown, not pretty,
rather plainly but well dressed, with a beautiful manner. An
atmosphere of niceness hung about her.
She acknowledged the introduction pleasantly. "You're
from New York, Mrs. Neal-I wonder if you know my cousin
Sylvia Marshall?"
Maggie could have jumped for joy. "She's my best friend."
Things went a little better, then. Miss Talbert asked her
to go in bathing, introduced her to a few people, beckoned her
over to her table at lunch. But she and her party were staying
for only three days more, and Maggie was almost as badly off
as ever when she left.
Her husband took her down to the pavilion the next day, and
left her there. A sharp-faced old woman wearing a plain sadcolored dress and a formidable false front, beckoned to her.
"What does your husband do?" she asked the girl, looking
at her over sloping glasses.
Maggie, confused, said he was in the motor-business. The
old woman turned incredulously away.
She determined to ask her husband about his work. But
he gave her no satisfaction.
"You wouldn't understand it. Too much explaining to it.
I make money enough for you, don't I, girl?" He laid a heavy
hand on her frail shoulder.
He thought he'd go to Philadelphia to live. "Feller told
me of some good prospects there. We'll just room for a while.
If we don't like it, we can go back to New York."
She was satisfied. She didn't want to return to New York,
she realized. Her mother could make out with the money
which, Neal had assured her, she could send regularly. And it
made her sick to think of the Marshalls.
Without regrets she mounted the train with him one day



118


TJHERRE IS CONFUSION


and went to the big, sprawling city. Its size, its long stretches
of streets appalled her. The awful silence which seemed to
descend over the town when she got below Walnut Street
frightened her. One could be very lonely here, no doubt.
The "rooming" of which her husband had spoken proved to
mean the second floor of a house in South Fifteenth Street.
There were three rooms and a bath. She liked this because it
gave her something to do. She kept them clean, arranged and
rearranged the charming furniture which Neal gave her, and
prepared their simple meals.
It was the first time she had had a really attractive setting.
And she was soothed, bewitched by its effect. Her rather
simple plan of life contained, it must be remembered, only
three ideas,-comfort, respectability, and love. This last had
been added to her list very recently. She would have married
Philip any time during the last five years without loving him,
for the sake of the security which he could have brought her.
So it is not strange, then, that she and Neal sailed their little
craft so smoothly. It is true that marriage did not in reality
prove as interesting and picturesque as she in common with
most girls had conceived it to be. But marriage was marriage,
and she must make the best of it. Neal was still kind, almost
fatherly, very generous, clean, and, as far as she could see, had
no bad habits. He smoked one cigar after each meal, and
almost never drank.
"Can't afford it in my business," she heard him say often.
His business! -If only he hadn't been so mysterious about
that. Still it must be all right. Men called on him pretty
often and he would see them in the middle room, which Maggie
had turned into a restful living room. Certainly he made
plenty of money.
She had comfort then and she did not feel the lack of love.
Occasionally it occurred to her, it would be nice to be performing some of her housewifely duties for Philip. She



THERE IS CONFUSION                  119
thought he would enjoy doing some of them with her. But
perhaps that was because he was young. Things seemed to
change so when one became old,-at least elderly. And she
did not think Philip would have been out as much as Neal.
Her passion, however, was for respectable company,-for
more than that if she had but known it. She wanted friends,
impeccable young women with whom she could talk over
things, and exchange patterns and recipes, or go to the
matinee. Once she met Miss Talbert on Christian Street. The
girl greeted her kindly but a bit doubtfully, spoke about the
weather. Then came the query:
"What did you say your husband's name was, Mrs. Neal?"
"Why Neal, of course, oh, Henderson, Henderson Neal.",
Miss Talbert looked at her a little sadly, exchanged a few
more banalities, and went on her assured way.
"I did hope she'd ask me to call," Maggie murmured. "How
am I ever to get to know anybody in this great town?"
On the floor above her lived a girl and her brother, Annie
and Thomas Mason. The brother played and the girl sewed
and kept house. Once Annie got a letter of Neal's by mistake
and brought it down to Maggie. She was in her living-room
trying to shorten a skirt when Annie tapped.
She stepped to the door. "Oh, come in."
Miss Mason came in, nothing loth. "I got your husband's
letter by mistake. He's Mr. H. Neal ain't he?" She held out
the letter glancing about the room. "You've fixed it up real
pretty here. The last roomers kept the place looking so bad.
You going to stay long?"
Maggie didn't know. She was transported at the sight of
the pleasant-voiced friendly girl and the North Pennsylvania
accent which carried with it something very wholesome and
grateful.
Miss Mason was frankly curious. "You here alone all
day? What do you do while your husband's to work?"



THERE IS CONFUSION


121


made a pretty fair salary, his sister told Maggie, for he played
at private dances for wealthy white people in West Philadelphia, Rosemont, Sharon, Chestnut Hill and various other
suburbs.
"But he don't give me much 'cause he wants to leave the
country for good sometime. I keep house for him and he pays
for the lodgings and for most of our food. I make what little
extra I can by taking in plain sewing. Your husband's right
open-handed, ain't he?"
"Yes," said Maggie heartily. "He's very generous and very
kind." She wanted to change the subject, for Annie was inquisitive-one never knew what she'd ask next.
"Funny, ain't it," pursued Annie, her mouth full of pinsshe was at her everlasting sewing, turning up the hem of a
bath-robe-"I ain't never seen him yet, no, nor Tom neither."
"Well, you will. Come and walk up to South Street with
me. I want to get some postal cards."
It was an aimless existence, but it had its points. Her mother
was comfortable, she herself had ease, a husband and a companion.
She went out to market one chilly November morning and
came back later than she expected. She had scarcely got in
before Annie appeared, an unusual flush on her yellow, freckled
cheeks. Annie had reddish, crinkled hair, which she wore
brushed stiffly back from her high forehead into a hard, ungraceful knob; "rhiny" hair, Maggie knew Sylvia and the
boys would call it. She could imagine hovw they would talk
about Annie in their pleasant, unmalicious way. Joanna
would strike her attitude and imitate her accent. Annie broke
into these reminiscences.
"I been down here two or three times already. Kind o' rawish
like."
"Yes., I think it's going to rain. Ill light the gas-heater



122


THERE IS CONFUSION


and we can sit here and thaw out. I enjoy a chilly day if it's
warm inside.>"
"Kind o' that way myself."
"Oh, you said you'd been here before. Want to see me
about anything special?"
"Oh, aimed I'd come set with you a spell. Me and Tomnow-we saw your husband last night."
"That so? Where? How'd you guess it was he?"
"Near Bainbridge Street, then we watched him come in here.
Why, Tom knowed him a'ready. I didn't know his name was
Henderson. I'd heard of him before myself."
Outside a steady soaking rain had begun to fall in the gray
somberness of the November afternoon. The gas-heater cast
a ruddy oblong of light on the white ceiling. Maggie, who had
been straightening out a paper pattern, crossed the room and
threw her slight figure on the couch, huddling close against
the wall. She shivered a little in the luxurious warmth.
"Isn't it grand to be indoors? Where did you ever hear of
my husband?"
She was becoming drowsy and did not notice at first that
Annie had not answered her. When she did, she looked up
suddenly to catch the girl's dog-like brown eyes fixed wistfully on hers.
"What's the matter Annie?"
"Nothing."
"Oh, but there is. Are you sick? Has Tom been unkind
to you?"
"Oh, it isn't me. It's you! Oh, Maggie, how could you?"
"What about me? How could I what?"
"Marry him?"
"Marry whom? my husband,-why shouldn't I?"
"Didn't you know?"
"For God's sake speak up, Annie Mason. What is it you



THERE IS CONFUSION


123


know about him? Has he got another wife? Is he an escaped
convict?"
"He's a gambler."
"A what?"
"A gambler. Tom knows him well. And I guess I musta
saw him when I was a little girl. He used to live up around
Stroudsburg. They run him out of town."
"I'll never believe it." But in her heart she did. That
money-why, of course, his long hours, especially at night,
his reticence-all this combined to make her recognize the
truth.
"You poor thing. Of course you don't want to believe it.
That's what I said to Tom. I said, 'That poor thing, she's
got no notion of it.'"
It was intolerable, such pity!  "Where is your brother,
Annie?"
"Who, Tom! Prob'ly up stairs, he don't go out to rehearsal
till four."
"Tell him to come here."
Annie went out, whimpering a little, twisting her fingers in
the folds of her white apron. She came back followed by a
tall thin young man, dark, with kind, soft brown eyes. Maggie
noticed that the hair in front of his ears was unshaven to' form
flat side-whiskers. "Siders" the boys used to call them. They
had teased Sandy about them, for he had affected them in his
college days.
She was standing by the table holding the envelope of the
paper pattern in her hand. "Mr. Mason, what's this you
know about my husband?"
"Annie shouldn't have told you, ma'am," he said abjectly.
"It was none of her business."
"Well, she has. Sit down, please, and tell me all you know."
"I'd rather stand, thank you, ma'am. Well-if I must. Even
when I was a little boy, Henderson Neal was knowed to be a



124


THERE IS CONFUSION


card-sharp. There wasn't nobody could stand against him.
Used to wait for the men on a Saturday night, white and
colored. He'd meet 'em in the bar and treat, and then ask
'em in on a little game. And they'd play, till they was cleaned
out. Then he'd give 'em another drink, and clap 'em on the
back. Perhaps he'd hand 'em back a dollar. 'Better luck
next time old man!' And they'd come back the next Satur,
day night, the poor fools. Some of them blowed their brains
out, they got so far back in their debts."
She was tearing the envelope into bits, but her voice was
steady. "You're sure of this?"
"My uncle was one of them that killed theirselves. They
was a colored minister come to Stroudsburg and he run him
out of town. Then he crossed over to Phillipsburg, then down
to Trenton. They made things too hot for him there, too.
Then he got in with a white saloon-keeper in the mining districts in Pennsylvania. Finally things got too hot for him
and he left the country for a while, was servant to an actor.
He come back in about five years with another name."
"An alias," murmured Annie who read the papers.
"But pretty soon he started out again under his own name.
You see he got some political protection in New York, and I
guess he's got the same here. Most people know about him
a'ready. I'm sorry I had to tell you, ma'am."
"Yes, yes, I'm sure. Would-would you mind leaving me
now? You, too, Annie-please."
She didn't lie down and moan and cry as she had donewas it less than six months ago?-when she received Joanna's
letter. That was child's trouble compared to this. She had
wanted so to be decent, and she was a gambler's wife. God!
how funny!
Now she must think, she must think. Oh, what was she
to do? Leave him, she knew that. But afterwards? She had
no money. He had given her her very clothes. Her old ones
were at her mother's. Her mother!



THERE IS CONFUSION


125


"Poor Mamma!" she, said again as on a former occasion.
"What a hell her life's always been! "
No wonder those people, those men in Atlantic City who
knew him didn't introduce their women folks to her.
"I suppose they thought 'You thief! Dressing that girl on
other men's money!"'
Pretty soon he'd be home for dinner. She heard him
presently coming up the stairs. There! He had stepped on the
creaky one. That meant he was-now-just outside the door.
He stepped in.
"Nice and warm in here."
She barely allowed him time to take off his overcoat. "Henderson, I know how you make your money. You're a gambler."
He didn't deny it. "Who told you that?"
"The nephew of that man, that Mr. Mason (she hazarded
the name) who shot himself in Stroudsburg."
"Where'd you see him?"
"What difference does that make? And I've been living
like a queen off stolen money. I want you to know I'm leaving
you this instant."
He caught her by the arm. "Don't be a fool, Maggie!"
She could see the blood mounting, as his temper rose,
shadowing his dark face.
"That's what I'm trying to do-stop being a fool."
"Where will you go, how can you live? Off my money?
You've none of your own."
"I'll make some."
"I'll never let you go. I'll kill you first." He crushed
both slender wrists in his brutal hand and she went ashen
with pain.
"I wish you would kill me."
He flung her away from him then and she leaned back
against the wall, breathing hard.



1L26


THERE IS CONFUSION


"I suppose you'll go back to that man, that fine gentleman
that didn't want you."
"Isn't it likely he'd want me now? I was a nice girl then,
not the wife of a gambler."
He broke down suddenly at that, sank in a chair, buried his
head in his hands.
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to let me go." Her voice was hard.
He lifted a wretched face. "You wouldn't stay even if I
was to do something else-something decent?"
But she couldn't forgive him for dragging her into this
abyss, this slough of degradation.
"You couldn't change now, and anyway I wouldn't live
with you."
To her amazement he got up, took his hat and coat and
started for the door.
"I'll go. You're not the one to be turned out. You know I
pay for these rooms a quarter in advance. This here's the
beginning of the second quarter. There's some money in the
top bureau drawer."
"I don't want the money. Take it with you." She got it
and stuffed a handful of bills-yellow ones-in the pocket
of his overcoat. "I don't want your rooms, either."
"You'll have to keep them. You've no money and you've no
place to go. You ain't got a friend in Philadelphia, and you
can't walk to New York. If you walk around the streets
long enough, you'll find there's worse things can happen than
being a gambler's wife." He straightened up. "If you don't
promise me to stay, Ill tag around after you everywheres
you go."
"If I stay-for a while-will you promise me not to come
back?"
"I promise."
"Pooh, the promise of a gambler!" She hated him.



THERE IS CONFUSION


127


"I'I show you. Best not to try me too far though, Maggie."
"Well, are you going?"
He walked out, closing the door very quietly after him. She
had not shed a tear, she did not now. Instead she sat, with
her brow wrinkled, trying to recall something.
"Oh, yes," she sprang up and rushed to the closet, pulling
with nervous, shaking fingers at the garments hanging there.
In the pocket of her little poplin suit, the suit in which she was
married, she found what she was looking for.
It was an oblong business card, slightly soiled around the
edges. She had come across it in Atlantic City and for some
reason had kept it. Across the front ran a neat superscription
MADAME HARKNESS
Hair Culturist
270 West I37th Street
New York City
Her glance dropped to the left-hand corner. Yes, she was
right, there it was: Branch offices-Washington, D. C., I307
U Street, N. W.; Baltimore, I8x6 Druid Hill Avenue; Philadelphia, 2021 South Street.
She sat all night brooding wide eyed over the purring gasstove. In the morning she made herself tidy and walked up
to Twentieth and South.



CHAPTER XV


SYLVIA was arranging the smallest birthday cake in the
world. It bore one very small candle and it was for
the very small baby who, propped up in a high chair, sat
and watched the birthday proceedings with round solemn eyes.
A three-year-old youngster, whose nose just rose above the edge
of the table, watched, too, with eyes no less round and far more
interested.
"Look at the darlings! " said Sylvia. "They know just what
their mother's doing. Aren't my children intelligent, Brian?"
"What you mistake for intelligence is hunger, much more
likely," laughed her husband. "I've seen Roger look that way
before when there wasn't, any birthday cake, but when there
certainly were eats."
"You watch them," said Sylvia, "and I'll see if mother and
father are ready to come. I had a telegram from Joanna this
afternoon, so I know she can't make it." Her voice floated
up to him as she ran down the back stairs.
The five years of Sylvia's married life had brought their
changes to the Marshall household. Mrs. Marshall had insisted on Sylvia's and Brian's remaining with them.
"Else we'd be lonely," she complained, "what with Sandy
gone for good, and Philip and Joanna everlastingly 'on the
road,' as they express it."
Alexander and Helena Arnold, after seeing each other constantly and unresponsively for ten years, suddenly fell
completely in love on that night of the Pierce Day Nursery
dance. Sandy proved himself an impulsive wooer, for he won
128



THERE IS CONFUSION


131:


and a certain grave beauty which did not strike the observer
at first as did Sylvia's or even poor Maggie's. But it grew on
one and remained. Young men, though they liked to be seen
with a star, were a little afraid of her queenliness, her faint
condescension. She took herself so seriously! Her own folks
and Peter often teased her about this, but they adored it in
her. And she, in turn, adored her little fame, the footlights,
the adulation. Even the smallest church in the quietest backwoods, with a group of patient dark faces peering at her out
of the often smoky background, had its appeal. At such times,
strange to say, she was at her best, gave of her finest. She
would come on the stage, trailing clouds of glory, and lean
toward them-a rosy brown vision. In some misty colorful
robe of Sylvia's designing, her thick crinkling hair piled high
on her head as the Spanish woman had taught her, she
seemed to say:
"I am no better than you. You are no worse than I. Whatever I am, you, in your children, may be. Whatever you are,
I in my father have been."
She was absolutely sincere in her estimation of her art, or
of any art. It was only in its relation to the other things
of life that she lost her vision and sense of proportion.
She liked most to go to Philadelphia, where she was in great
favor. There she had had three great triumphs, once in Association Hall, twice at the Academy of Music. Both she and
Peter had thrilled when she came from the Academy the
second time. She sent her flowers and her stage-gown home
in the car of a friend, while she and Peter were whirled in a
taxi out to Fairmount Park.
They had driven to the Green Street entrance, and then
dismissing the cab had walked around the drive, up the steps.,
in front of the mansion and on to Lemon Hill. It was one of
those last, warm, almost hot nights of Indian Summer. The
slopes of the park lay deserted before them, deep in velvety



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shadow, with here and there a gold patch bright as day under
the watching arc-light.
They sat down on the dry, short grass. "Like that other
evening in Morningside, long, long ago. How long, Joanna?"
"Oh, ages! How'd I sing, Peter?"
"Divinely. You looked like an angel, Janna. No, not an
angel, more like a siren in that yellow dress. Where'd you
get it, dearest?"
"Yellow nothing! That was orange-deep, deep orange.
Sylvia planned it out for me. Isn't she a genius? Through
me she certainly is teaching these colored people how to dress.
We will not wear these conventional colors-grays, taupe,
beige-poor boy, you don't know what they are, do you?
They're all right for these palefaces. But colored people need
color, life, vividness."
"George! I guess you're right. How'd you come to think
of it?"
"I didn't. It was Sylvia. I started out in a white dress.
You should have seen me looking like an icebergish angel."
"You are one, you know Janna."
"Which? Iceberg or angel?"
"Both. One makes me adore you, the other says 'hands
off'."
"Not a bad thing, do you think, considering all the men
I meet?"
"I hate them. Sure you don't like any of 'em better than
me?"
"No, dear, I like you best."
" 'No, dear, I like you best'," he mimicked. "For God's
*  sake, Jan, can't you say, 'Peter, I love you always'? Say it."
She hesitated, sighed a little. "Peter I love you."
"Why'd you leave off 'always'?"
"Dear little boy, how can I say it?. I do when I think of
it. But, Peter, I have so much to think about-my tour, my



THERE IS CONFUSION                  133
booking, you know, my lessons in French and Italian, my
dancing. I still keep that up; I'd really rather do that than
sing. Dancing makes me-"
"Oh, damn the dancing!"
"Why, Peter! " She looked at his flushed face in amazement.
"Hang it all, talking to me about dancing, when I'm talking
to you about love-love, Joanna-and there's nothing to keep
us from getting married. Some fellows and girls ball their
lives up so they can't ever get them straightened out. But
here we are 'all set' as the fellows say. And you talk to me
-about dancing! Suppose I were to talk to you about Materia
Medical"
"I think it would be a good thing if you would."
He was honestly aggrieved at that.
She leaned over and kissed him. "See how brazen I am.
That's the second time I've given you a kiss. Oh, Peter, you
big baby!"
"Dear Janna, I love you so!  Great Scott! aren't girls
funny! You can't guess how hard it is for me to be letting
all these stupid years go by. Sometimes I've half a mind to
chuck it all."
"You'd never get me then."
"I don't suppose I would. Well, I have you now."
"Dear Peter, we must be going home. Cousin Parthenia
will rave."
"Pshaw, she knows you're with me. Love me, darling?"
"You know I do, you dear, dear boy."
"Come, sit up on the bench. There, that's it." He knelt
before her. "Know what I'm going to give you to-night?"
He felt in his pocket. "Like it, Janna?"
He showed her a ring, a tiny gold chased ring, whose
facets gleamed like diamonds.
"Peter, it's too beautiful. Oh, I love you for it."
He slipped it on her finger, got up and sat beside her,



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kissing her little cold hands. She leaned against his shoulder,
-he put his arm about her. A poignant sweetness seemed to
flood in eni them out of the solemn, mellow night.
Peter was the first to stir. "I must get you home, darling.
Oh, Joanna, aren't you too happy? I wonder if we wouldn't
be better off if we were resting like this, our arms close about
each other, in our grave."
The inevitable separation came the next day. Joanna was
cold, almost indifferent. It was the way she had taught herself to endure pain. She hated always to leave Peter, particularly if she were returning to New York. The excitement of
visiting other places healed her loneliness. Sometimes she
wished she weren't going to see Peter for these brief visits
which lacerated her so.
Unfortunately her lover did not understand this. "How can
she melt like she did last night and then leave me so cool
and composed this morning?" he wondered, staring dejectedly
after the departing express. He had not ridden to West Philadelphia with her because he had to be at a hospital at Sixteenth Street at one o'clock and it was now noon.
"She used to cry when we separated." He stood uncertainly a moment on the corner of Fifteenth and Market.
"Guess I'll go over to that little Automat on Juniper Street
and snatch a mouthful. I won't feel like eating after I see
Carpenter start in on that slashing. Golly, what a steady
hand he has."
He walked through the City Hall Arcade to Juniper Street,
crossed in front of Wanamaker's and forced a passage through
the teeming little by-way
The Automat was crowded. "Have to eat standing," he
thought, drawing a glass of water and seizing a knife and
fork. "No, there's an empty table." He collected his food
and began to eat.



THER~EE IS CONFUSION


135


Someone put a plate on the table beside him, rested a hand
there a moment. Peter glanced at it.
"Colored. What a nice hand! Ought to have a peach of
a face to match that."
He looked up. "Maggie Ellersley! I had heard you lived
here. I thought I saw you once, why-four years ago-one New
Year's night on Twentieth Street. You've been here ever
since?"
"Yes, Peter. Oh, it's so nice to see you!"
"Isn't it, though! I mean isn't it great to see somebody from
home? I've just seen Joanna off."
Her face stiffened at that. But he was busy looking at his
watch.
"Ten minutes more! Look here, Maggie, what'd you drop
us all that way for? How's your husband?"
She answered his second question. "I haven't any."
He glanced at her apologetically, ashamed of his levity.
"Is he dead?"
"No," said Maggie woodenly. "I've left him!"
"Oh!" he was embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Maggie. Got to
run now. When may I see you again?"
His engaging manner brought back the old days. "Peter,
you aren't ashamed of me?"
"My dear girl!" He was younger than she and for that
reason he adopted a paternal air, patting her on the shoulder.
"How can you ask that?"
"Would you come to see me to-night, Peter? Come to
dinner?"
"Try me. What's the address?"
She gave it to him. "That's Fifteenth and Fitzwater."
"Yes, I know. I'll see you at six sharp. Until then, Maggie."
He bared his curly head and flashed out the side door.
He tapped at her door at six.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


"I didn't hear you ring," said Maggie. "Come in.  This
is nice, Peter."
"I -should say so. Jolly little place you've got here." He
settled back on the couch, stretched out his long legs. "All
these years I've been tramping about Philadelphia, a poor
homeless beggar, when I might have been coming to see you.
How long have you been alone, Maggie?"
"Four and a half years."
"Four and a half years! Why that's-look here, how long
have you been married?"
"Five years last June. I left him almost right away, or
rather he left me."
"Deserted you, you mean?"
"No, no, not that. He wanted to stay. I-I couldn't let
him." She told him all about it. "Peter, think of it, I'd married a gambler, a common gambler. And I'd wanted so to be
decent!" She wept painfully.        I
He put his arm about her slender shoulders. "There, there
now, Maggie.>'
CIt's the first time I've shed a tear about it. Seeing you,
someone out of the old happy days, upset me. Sit here, Peter."
"They were wonderful days, weren't they? Remember what
a bunch we were? And now we're scattered everywhere.
Joanna and Philip romping all over the country; Sylvia and
Brian married; Sandy too, did you know it?"
"Yes, -I read of it in the Amsterdam News."
"You and I here. Harry Portor-do you remember him?"
"Ye-es, big square fellow, wore glasses. He used to go
skating with us, didn't he?"
"Yes, that's the fellow. He studied medicine, too, at Harvard.
Went to Washington as interne in the Freedmen's Hospital.
I haven't seen him for ages. What'd you leave us for so
suddenly, Maggie?"
She couldn't tell him, of all people, about Joanna.



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sending him away, but since he's had this suspicion I've really
been afraid. I expect he'll be really violent some day."
"Well, Great Scott, won't my coming to see you be
dangerous? I was just thinking what good times we'd have."
"We will. No, you're all right. He wouldn't be interested
in you after he once knew who you were. And there's Thomas
Mason upstairs; he's not bothered about him either, though
Tom and his sister are in here all the time."
Peter pushed his chair back. "That was a mighty good
dinner, Maggie. Mind if I smoke?" He lit a cigarette. "Well,
you've had hard luck, haven't you? But never mind, it's
bound to break even, sooner or later. That's what I keep saying to myself."
"You in trouble too, Peter? I've been running on so about
my affairs. Tell me about yours. Studying the way you
have to must be an awful strain."
He noticed gratefully how quick and ready was her sympathy. That was just it. Studying itself wasn't so bad, working wasn't bad. But the combination, the struggle to make
ends meet, his few social obligations, and color!
"Why, it's awful. I'm on the rack all the time.
"If you could stop for a year or so and take a little rest,
do something entirely different."
He glanced at her, amused but touched. "Joanna ought to
hear you say that. She'd faint away. She can't understand
anybody's wanting to let up."
Maggie said with a faint bitterness that you must always
be top notch for Joanna.
"I should say so. Here, I'll help you with the dishes. Well,
-if you really don't want me." She washed and wiped so
fast that the room seemed cleared by magic. It had turned
cooler and Maggie lit her little gas-stove.
Peter smoked and relapsed into a moody silence, which he
broke now and then with an account of his struggles. His



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139


Uncle Peter had died during his third year and the house
had been inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Boyd. Of course
he couldn't expect anything of her. Her father was only
his great-uncle, and she had her own children to look after.
He had moved to Mrs. Larrabee's in West Philadelphia, with
some of his fraternity brothers. Somehow his money sped.
His books were expensive, the cost of his instruments pure
robbery.
"I do what playing I can, but I confess I'm up against it,"
he ended ruefully.
"Lots of the boys do waiting, don't they?" asked Maggie.
"Why don't you do that?"
He just couldn't, he told her.
"I never could endure standing around 'grand white folks."'
Both of them smiled at the childhood's phrase. "'Yes, sir,
thank you- Oh, no, sir.' Then some lazy white banker, or
some fat white woman that never did a day's work in her
life, puts a hand in a pocket and offers you a dime. God, how
I hate it! I did it once at Asbury Park, Phil did, too. We
both said, 'Never again!'"
"Where do you play?"
"At different dance-halls. They don't pay as well here as
in New York, though. What's that, Maggie?"
A thin stream of music, played on a violin, floated down to
them.
"That's good fiddling. Is it in this house?"
"Yes. It's Tom Mason, the man I told you about. The
very thing for you! He makes barrels of money. Come on,
Peter."
She led him, bewildered, up to the third floor, tapped on a
door and was admitted to a room much like the one she had
just left. A young woman with red crinkled hair and a yellow
freckled face sat sewing on a white apron. The young man



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THERE IS CONFUSION


who let them in had been putting some resin on his bow.
Against the wall stood a battered, time-worn piano.
"Hello, Annie," said Maggie. "Hello, Tom. This is my
friend Mr. Bye. I've brought him up to hear you play."
"But I can't, Miss Maggie. I've no accompanist." He
turned soft brown eyes upon her. "Unless your friend here
plays the piano."
"Well, I do admit to tickling the ivories occasionally,"
laughed Peter. "Let's see your score."
He sat down to the piano, ran his brown limber fingers over
the keys, and began to play the accompaniment to a typical
syncopated melody, accenting the time with staccato nods
of his well-shaped head.
"Oh, great, that's great!" cried Tom after a few minutes.
"Wait till I get my violin."
Together they made some wonderful sounds. "Play that
passage again, will you?" Tom pointed it out with his bow.
"That's the best accompanist you've ever had, isn't it, Tom?"
Annie asked.
"I should say so. Don't suppose you'd ever consent to
doin' this sort of thing in public, Mr. Bye?"
"That depends on the price and the hours," said Peter.
Tom told him about himself. He played, had all the work
he could do, for the wealthy folks of the town and suburbs.
The pay was first-rate. Only he had never been able to keep
a good accompanist.
"They're so do-less," he complained. "What's your regular
line?"
Peter explained that he was a student.
Mason liked that. "Then you'd be workin' because you'd
really need the fun's. Nothin' like having a purpose. Do you
think you could go out to Sharon Hill with me to-morrow:
night and play that? There'd be a few other odds and ends.
Though them white folks don't let me play nothin' much but



THERE IS CONFUSION


A4il


that, once I get started. 'You might drop in for an hour tomorrow and take a peep at the others. You can do them easy,
if you can read that." He pointed to the piece they'd already
played.
"Honey-Babe," declaimed Peter. "Well, Mr. Mason, if we
can come to terms, I'm your man."
Mason took him aside then, and whispered a few words.
"All right," Peter told him, shaking hands. "That listens
pretty. See you to-morrow, say at four. Good-night folks.
You coming too, Maggie?"
Downstairs he stopped at the landing. "Maggie, you jewel!
How well you've managed! No, I won't come in. You see
what was worrying me most was my operating set. The price
of those little steel knives and forceps is going to touch the
sky pretty soon. Wow! This confounded war is taking
everything across seas. Fellow told me to get my order in
before Christmas even if I didn't pay for them till next year.
But where was I going to raise all that money? Now the way
looks clearer."
"I'm so glad, Peter."
"It's me that's glad, Maggie. Best thing in the world for me
that I met you to-day. Such a piece of fortune! Cheer up,
child! Perhaps we'll bring each other luck!"



CHAPTER XVI
THE house on South Fifteenth Street saw Peter often
after that. Mason could have given him work every
night if he had wanted it. As it was he gave him
enough to cause him to come for rehearsals three and four
times a week. Usually Peter terminated his practice with a
visit to Maggie, who got home regularly at five-thirty when
she was in town.
She appreciated Peter's company, for she had been very
lonely in this big city with its impregnable social fortresses.
"It's a wonder you come to see me so often, Peter," she told
him wistfully. "Being a Bye gives you the entrance everywhere among the oldest of these 'old Philadelphians."`
"Yes," said Peter cheerfully, "but home-folks are best. And
then you make it so pleasant for me, Maggie. Why, I've never
eaten in my life anything so wonderful as that dinner Sunday.
You certainly have the knack of making a fellow feel comfortable."
She was proud to have him there, he was so handsome and
charming, but much more than that, so clearly a personage.
She enjoyed being seen with him. He took her out occasionally to the park, to the theaters on Broad Street, once to a
bazaar given by some fine ladies at the Y. M. C. A. on Christian Street. She recognized some of the women as among those
whom she had seen at Atlantic City. The startled stare of
Alice Talbert, who happened to be there that evening, afforded
her endless satisfaction. Maggie realized she spoke to her
with a sort of wondering respect.
142



THERE IS CONFUSION


143


"Wonder what she thought," she said to herself. "Well, she
can think anything she pleases." She had not forgotten Miss
Talbert's cool reception when she called at Lawyer Talbert's
office on the corner of Fifteenth and Lombard. Alice was her
father's secretary. She was quite remote on seeing Maggie,
until she learned that the latter's business was with the lawyer.
Peter was making money these days, real money he told
Maggie.
"I'm better off financially than I've ever been in my life.
Why, I could make a real living at this sort of thing. Mason's
got a wonderful clientele!"  As usual he was lounging in
Maggie's little living-room, smoking, watching her move about
in her sober house-dress, arranging her accounts and orders.
She had bought a little typewriter and had learned to use it.
Peter was surprised to find her so methodical. He realized
that she would have been a great help to Philip.
He felt a little guilty about coming to Maggie's so often.
"But it's so confoundedly uncomfortable in my room. Of
course I could do better now, but it's a lot of trouble to move.
It's way up at the top of the house, clean enough, but with
just a few sticks of furniture in it, a green iron-bed-ugh!some books and the Bye family Bible. Don't know why I
lugged that along with me. I never look in it. Well, so long,
Maggie, see you to-morrow or next day."
"All right, Peter. You're sure you won't have me fix a cup
of cocoa for you before you go? You poor, neglected boy!
Two buttons off that overcoat. Bring it in the next time you
come and I'll put them on for you. I'll find some that will
match up here on South Street." He said he could attend to
it himself, but she told him no, that wasn't a man's job.
"You certainly are some girl!" He took her hand in his
for a moment. "I'll bring it with bells. Here, turn me out.
I've got to get up at six to-morrow morning. Haven't put my



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nose inside of Carter's classes this week. Playing out so late
with Mason puts me out of commission, you bet."
"Carter, Carter, that's the Professor of Surgery, isn't it?"
"No! no    That's Davenant.   I never miss one of his
classes. Eat it up in gobs. The old boy's fond of me. Says
I'm his pet carver. Wanted to take me to see an operation
in a private hospital last week-white of course-but Carter
interfered. 'Not the place for Bye, Dr. Davenant,' he said.
I hate him with his confounded hypocritical patronage. I'd
like to chuck him in a minute."
Her sympathy was instant.
"Well, why don't you, Peter? After all, your music really
is in good shape. All this steady practice these long years
must count for something. Tom says you're a wonder. He'd
like to go into partnership with you, I'm sure. He says there's
heaps of money in it."
"Oodles! Absolutely! But nothing doing, Maggie. Too
mediocre for Miss Joanna Marshall. But she deserves the
best, she's the best herself," he added in quick loyalty. "Well,
that was a false start I made before, wasn't it? I'm really
going this time. Mr. Peter Bye, exit this way."
He walked up to Lombard Street, thinking. "That girl can
certainly see along with you. Nice to meet some one with a
disposition like that. Of course I'd rather be a surgeon. But
I'm tired of this everlasting digging. I've been nothing but a
slave for nearly seven years. And poor as the deuce in the
bargain. Good Lord, when I think of all the money I might
have made out of you!" He looked at his fine slender hands
with their firm square-tipped fingers.
"Ideal surgeon hands," Doctor Davenant had told his
assistant.
An idea struck Peter. "I wonder what Joanna would say to
That!" He rushed in the house, seized a piece of paper and a
pen and told her about it.



THERE IS CONFUSION


145


"Of course, Jan, I don't expect you to marry me if I can't take
care of you. You wouldn't anyway, you're not like Sylvia. That's
not a slam, dearest, that's just a plain statement of facts. But I'm
making a lot of money right now-guess how?-with my music,
playing for 'grand white folks' at all the swell society functions. Of
course it takes me out of my classes sometimes, but I don't care, I'm
fed up with all that. I've got such a Negro-loving bunch of professors, except my surgical men.
"What say, Joanna, if I quit this, and we get married and I go
about the country with you as your accompanist? That ought to
suit you, for I don't suppose you ever dream of settling down.
"Did I tell you I met Maggie Ellersley? I see her very often.
The fellow I play with lives in the same house she does. In fact,
Maggie introduced me to him. She's been no end kind to me. You'll
be interested to know 'she's getting a divorce from that beast she
married. See what Philip has to say when you tell him.
"Mind you write me right away what you think about this."
The answer came post-haste.
"What I think about this," [wrote Joanna, infuriated] "is that I
don't want and won't have a husband who is just an ordinary strumming accompanist, playing one, two, three, one, two, three. Sometimes, Peter, I think you must be crazy."
A number of irritable and irritating notes followed on both
sides until a couple of weeks before Christmas, when both sank
into a mutinous silence.
What Peter did not understand and what Joanna never
knew he needed explained to him was that she wanted Peter to
be somebody for his own sake. She was really paying him a
sincere compliment when she told him that she did not want
an accompanist for a husband. Like many a woman of strong
and purposeful character, she hated a weak man. It followed
then that the man who won Joanna must be even stronger,
more determined than she.
She did not know much about marriage. She had not only
the usual virginal ignorance of many American girls, she had



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THERE IS CONFUSION


also a remarkable lack of curiosity on the matter. But she
knew vaguely that the man was supposed to be the head.
4ow could she, Joanna Marshall, ever surrender to a man who
was less than she in any respect? Her dominating nature
craved one still more dominant. But neither Peter nor she
knew this, she least of all. Youth, egotistic though it be, is
notably free from this kind of introspection.
Since American customs of courtship give the girl largely the
upper hand, Joanna was instinctively, if unanalytically, using
Peter's love for her, and her own desirability, as a whip to
goad him on. It was hard for her, too, much harder than Peter
knew, or than she realized. For she was beginning at last to
feel the tug of passion at her heart strings. It would never
have occurred to her to marry Peter before he was in their
common estimation "on his feet," she would never have asked
it of him, she did not expect him to ask it of her. But unconsciously she was yearning for the day when the two might join
hands and enter the portals which lead to the house of life.
Very often she found herself vaguely glad that she had her
work. Without it, what would she have done? What did
girls do while they waited for their young men? Heavens,
how awful to be sitting around listlessly from day to day,
waiting, waiting! Anything was better than that, even pounding a typewriter in a box of an office. It was this lack of interest and purpose on the part of girls which brought about so
many hasty marriages which terminated in-no, not poverty~mediocrity. Joanna hated the word; with her visual mind she
saw it embodied in broken chairs, cold gravy, dingy linen,
sticky children. She would never mind poverty half so much;
she would contrive somehow to climb out of that. But ordinary tame mediocrity!
Besides, colored people had had enough of that. Not for
Joanna!
It must not be thought that at this time she had any inten



THERE IS CONFUSION


147


tion of relinquishing her work after marriage. But it was for
that reason that she wanted Peter to come out of the herd.
She saw the two of them together, gracious, shining, perfect!
She heard whispers:
"That's Peter Bye, the distinguished surgeon!  His wife
is unusual, too, she was Joanna Marshall. You must have
heard of her. Why, she sings all over the country!"
And here was Peter offering her the vision of herself, standing glorious, resplendent in her stage clothes, while he trailed
across to the piano, her music portfolio under his arm:
"That's Peter Bye!"
"Peter Bye? Who's he?"
"The husband of Joanna Marshall, the artist."
She would never endure it.
"And I don't thank Maggie Ellersley the least bit for introducing him to this music man, whoever he is," she told herself
after she had read the letter. "Tell Philip she's getting a
divorce indeed! How much would any decent man be interested in her after that?"
Poor inexperienced Joanna!
Peter's vagaries were not her only worries. She was undergoing just now what she would have termed a really serious
disappointment. Her dancing, on which she had spent so many
years, so much of her father's and her own money, on which
she had built so many high hopes, was destined, it seemed,
to avail her nothing.
She had been so sure. Her art was so perfect, so complete
that even Bertully, cynic though he was, believed that in her
case the American stage must let down the bars.
"They have but to see you, Mademoiselle, to rdaliser zat
you are somebody, zat you have ze great gift. And when they
see you to danse, v'la!" He snapped his thin fingers. Joanna,
he told his assistant, Madame Celeste, was the best pupil he'd
ever had.



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"You look at her and she is ze child, so grave, so sage. In
another moment she is like a wild creature, a Bacchante.
Onless zey are all fools, these Americains, they take her up, hein
Celeste?"
Madame Celeste nodded a dark, assenting head.
Bertully himself accompanied her. There were three or
four managers for whom he had done favors.
They went first to a Mr. Abrams, who received Joanna
kindly. "I'm sure of your ability, my dear girl, and you ought
to go. You're young. I can see you could be made into a
beauty. With Bertully recommending you as he does, you
must be a wizard. But the white American public ain't ready
for you yet, they won't have you."
He looked at her reflectively a few seconds.
"I know the day is coming, but not for some time yet.
That don't console you much, does it? I've got an idea of
my own, if I think I can put  over, I'll send for you."
"Courage," said Bertully, helping her into the taxi, "there
are some others."
The next manager, David Kohler, was explicit and,to the
point. "Couldn't make any money out of you. America doesn't
want to see a colored dancer in the role of a premiere danseuse.
How's that accent, Bertully? She wants you to be absurd,
grotesque. Of course," tentatively, "you couldn't consider being corked up-you're brown but you're too light as you are
-and doing a break-down?"
"No," said Joanna shortly, "I couldn't. Shall we go, Monsieur?"
By the time they reached the third manager, Joanna for all
her natural assurance had become a little timid. Bertully's
name had gained them almost instant admission to the manager, but it was hard in the short wait to listen to the scarcely
veiled comments of the office girls and the other applicants.
"Say, what do you suppose she is?"



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149


"Must be a South American."
"She ain't, she's a nigger or I don't know one."
"Say, she's got her nerve comin' here. Think Snyder'll give
her anything?"
"Will he? Not a chance!"
Her cheeks were so flushed when she went in that she really
was beautiful. But Snyder gave her one look, checked himself
in the act of raising his hat, swung around to the Frenchman.
"This your- great find, Bertully?"
"Mais oui,` the old man began excitedly.
The other calmly lit a big black cigar.
"You needn't wait, Miss. Like to oblige you, Bertully,
but I couldn't do a thing for you."  He walked across the
office, held the door open for them, bent over Bertully's ear.
"You'll ruin your trade teachin' niggers, Bertully. Better take
my tip."
They rode down in the elevator in silence. Joanna, scarlet
to the ears, 'saw the conjectures written in the eyes of the
other passengers as they observed her and the Frenchman's
elaborate courtesies. She would take up no more of his time,
she told him, thanking him for his kindness; she would go
home now. He understood and beckoned her a taxi, into which
he helped her with another elaborate display of courtesy, much
to the interest of several spectators.
"So silly of me to mind this," Joanna scolded herself.
But she did mind it. How could it be possible that she,
Joanna Marshall, was meeting with rebuffs? Not that she
was conceited. The point was that she had grown up in her
own and Joel's belief,-naniely, that honest effort led invariably to success. This was probably the first time in her life
that she had been thwarted. She was like a spoiled child,
bewildered and indignant at being suddenly brought to book.
The week before Christmas a note came from Peter.
"Of course I've been planning as usual to come home, Jan.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


But we haven't been hitting it off so well lately. Thought
I'd better write and see if you really wanted me to."
She wrote him. "Of course I want you." Heavens, what
would Christmas be without Peter!
He told her on what train he was arriving and asked her
to meet it. She might have done so, but her day was as usual
very full and she had a rehearsal at six-of indefinite length.
She would have to cut out something. Too bad it had to be
meeting Peter. But he surely would come up to the house
at once.
Her accompanist appeared promptly and they put in a hard
two hours. Joanna, her ear unconsciously straining for the
telephone or the doorbell, was not up to her usual mark.
Eight o'clock and Peter not here and his train in at four!
Well, he wasn't coming then. She plunged into hard work.
Her father came by the door and watched her, thinking what
a picture she made in her pretty dress. She had put on one
of her old stage frocks, for she usually did better work if she
created for herself, as nearly as possible, the atmosphere of
the stage. At nine-thirty the accompanist left.
"We went rather slowly at first, but you came out splendidly
at the end, Miss Marshall. You were a little bit tired, perhaps."
"That must have been it. Thank you and good-night, Miss
Eggleston."
Still no Peter! "Mean thing, I'll fix him for that."
The bell buzzed softly, she could barely hear it. Yes, that
was he. She heard her father's voice, "In the back parlor,
Bye."
He came in, came toward her. "Well, Joanna, here's the
wanderer returned." He bent to kiss her.
She turned him a cold cheek, which to her surprise he kissed
without expostulation.



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151


He crossed the room, sat down and looked at her. "H'm,
how stagy we are in that get-up! "
He was different somehow, she thought, vaguely hurt by
his remark. One of her reasons for putting on the dress had
been so that she might please him. She asked him a question
to hide her chagrin.
"Where've you been, Peter? I thought your train got in
at four?"
"It did, but since you weren't there to meet me, I supposed
you didn't care whether I came late or early, or not at all.
I met Vera Manning in the station and took her to a movie."
Her spirits went up at that. This was just pique, sheer
pique.
"How lovely for Vera! And now I've got to send you home
almost right away. I've had a hard day and I'm dreadfully
tired. Tell you what, dear boy, come to luncheon to-morrow.
We'll have it together, just we two."
She thought after he had gone that he had looked at her
critically, impersonally.
"As though he were contrasting me with some one," she
murmured.
The next day confirmed her impression. Joanna asked him
to praise the luncheon.
"I fixed it every bit myself."
"I should think so, so feminine and knickknackish." His
tone said: "I'm used to having my taste consulted."
Joanna did not like the remark, but there was nothing really
to be said about it. She sprang up lightly, began to clear
away.
"Come on, lazy Peter Bye, don't leave everything for me
to do." -
He lounged in his chair. "Oh, come, Joanna, I'm used to
being waited on, not doing the waiting."



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She stared at him then. "Well, good heavens! What on
earth has been happening to you in Philadelphia?"
He spoke from a contented reminiscence. "When I have
dinner at Maggie Neal's, she's not everlastingly asking me
to do this and do that. 'Sit still, Peter,' she says, 'this isn't
a man's work.'
"Maggie Neal has her own methods with her men friends.
Personally I prefer to have mine wait on me."
He rose to his feet. "Oh, yes, Queen Joanna must be
served."
They finished and went to the parlor. Joanna sang one or
two of her songs to his accompaniment. The incident rankled,
though she wouldn't let herself speak about it.
"But he certainly is changed," she said to herself in an
angry bewilderment.
She had to sing in Orange that night and did not intend
to return until the next morning.
"What do we do to-morrow?" Peter asked.
"Remember you said you wanted to hear Aida? I 'phoned
them to reserve tickets for us for to-morrow's matinee. But
they have to be called for. Better go down there first thing
in the morning, Peter."
He twisted around on the piano stool. "You'll be down
town to-morrow morning coming from Orange. Why don't
you stop for them?"
She couldn't believe her ears. "Peter Bye, you are spoilt,"
she flamed. "You're-why you're absolutely disgusting. We'll
never hear Aida if you depend on my getting the tickets.
As long as he was well and not busy, there's no man in -the
world I'd do it for."
"Married women do it for their husbands."
"Sylvia doesn't do it for Brian. He wouldn't dream of
asking her. Besides, that's different. And, anyway, we're



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153


not married yet. Nor likely to be, if we don't get along any
better than this. Whatever's come over you, Peter?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I think you make a lot of
fuss over nothing, Joanna. But all right I'll get you the
tickets. See you at one-thirty?"
She sat a long time in her room after he had gone, her
hands and eyes busy with her day's mail, which Sylvia always
placed on her writing table. But her mind could not take
in the written words, it was too full of something else.
But Peter, Peter of all men to act like this! Both she and
Sylvia had always known that Maggie was unexacting. The
marvel was, however, that Peter should take so quickly to
this kind of treatment. Well, she'd just have to hold him
that much closer to the mark. He'd see that there were
some girls who knew what was due them.
It was time for her to dress. As she looked into the mirror
she voiced her real regret. "Two days of the vacation gone,
and we've done nothing but quarrel. To-day he didn't even
ask me for a kiss. Peter, you wretch. Just wait till you come
to your senses!"
They were a little stiff next day on the way to the matinee,
talking politely and impersonally about the weather in Philadelphia and New York, Joanna's concert, and Sylvia's children. Walking up Broadway, however, they thawed a little.
Joanna as usual was looking trim. She wore that winter an
extremely trig tobacco-brown suit, with a fur turban and a
narrow neckpiece of raccoon, the light part setting off the
bronze distinction of her face. But Peter was superlative.
His financial success with Tom Mason had made it possible
for him to indulge in a new outfit which emphasized the distinction of his carriage, set off his handsome face. Several
people looked at him on- the crowded street. Joanna herself
stole several glances sidewise.
He caught her at it. "Joanna Marshall, if you look at me



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again like that, just once more, mind you, I'll snatch you
up in my arms this minute and kiss you."
"You wouldn't dare."
"I dare you to try it. I'd do it no matter how much you
kicked and struggled. Wouldn't the people stare?"
Joanna giggled. "Can't you see the headlines in the papers
to-morrow? 'Burly Negro Attacks Strapping Negress on
Broadway!'"
"Yes, and the small type underneath, 'An interested crowd
gathered about a pair of dusky combatants yesterday. A
Negro and Negress —  "
Joanna interrupted: "Both of them spelt with a small 'n,'
remember! Here we are at the Opera."
He caught her hand. "Just because you jockeyed me out
of that kiss that time, clever Joanna, doesn't mean that I'm
going to do without it forever."
In her heart she loved him. "Oh, Peter, be like this al.
ways," she prayed.



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I get my degree or not. You can't imagine all the petty unfairness about me. Only the other day the barber refused
to shave me in the college barber-shop. Your own cousin,
John Talbert, is a Zeta Gamma man if ever there was onethat's the equivalent to Phi Beta Kappa in his school, you
know. Do you think he got it? No, they black-balled him
out."
Joanna sat silent, stunned by this avalanche. And to think
she had precipitated it!
"Arabelle Morton's sister, Selma," Peter went on morosely,
"took her Master's degree last year. The candidates sat in
alphabetical order. Selma sat in her seat wondering whom
the chair on the left of her belonged to-it was vacant. At
the last moment a girl came in, a Miss Nelson, who had been
in one or two of her classes. Selma knew she was a Southerner. 'Oh, I just can't sit there,' Selma heard her say, not
too much under her breath. And some friend of hers went
to the Professor in charge of the exercises and he let her change
her place, though it threw the whole line out of order."
He paused, still brooding.
"Another colored girl-can't think of her name-paid for a
seat in one of the Seminary rooms. The white girl next to her,
apparently a very pleasant person, had her books all over her
own desk space and this one, too. They were the best seats
in the room. The colored girl asked her to move them. She
just looked at her. Then this Miss-Miss Taylor, that was
her name, took it from one authority to another, finally to
the professor in charge of the Library. He assigned her another seat. Said the girl had been there four years, and that
anyway, she-the white girl-resented the colored girl's manner
toward her. The damned petty injustice!"
"But, Peter," Joanna argued, "you wouldn't let that interfere with your whole career, change your whole life?"
"Why shouldn't I? There're plenty of pleasanter ways to



THERE IS CONFUSION


17


earn a living. Why should I take any more of their selfish
dog-in-the-manger foolishness? I can make all the money
I want with Tom Mason. If you aren't satisfied for me to be
an accompanist, I could go into partnership with him and
we could form and place orchestras. It's a perfectly feasible
plan, Joanna. Why shouldn't I pick the job that comes handiest, since the world owes me a living?"
He frowned, meditating. "Isn't it funny, I felt just then as
though I'd been through all this before. It's- just as though
I'd heard myself say that very thing some other time. Well,
what do you say, Joanna?"
"That I don't want a coward and a shirker for a husband.
As though that weren't the thing those white people-those
mean ones-wanted! Not all white people are that way.
Both of us know it, Peter. And it's up to us, to you and
me, Peter Bye, to show them we can stick to our last as well
as anybody else. If they can take the time to be petty, we
can take the time to walk past it. Oh, we must fight it when
we can, but we mustn't let it hold us back. Buck up, Peter,
be a man. You've got to be one if you're going to marry
me."
He shrugged his shoulders. "May I light a cigarette?"
But she noticed he did it with trembling fingers. "Just as
you say, Joanna."
She rose and faced him, this new Peter-this old Peter if
she did but know it, with the early shiftlessness, the irresoluteness of his father, Meriwether Bye, the ancient grudge of
his grandfather, Isaiah Bye, rearing up, bearing full and perfect
fruit in his heart. Both rage and despair possessed her, as
she saw the beautiful fabric of their future felled wantonly
to the ground. For the sake of a few narrow pedants!
"Peter, Peter, we've got to make our own lives. We can't
let these people ruin us." She felt her knees trembling under



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her. "We're both tired and beside ourselves. Come and see
me to-morrow, will you?"
What should she say to him now, she wondered next day
after a long white night. And once she had only to raise her
finger and he was willing, glad to do her bidding. Could it
be that after all these years she had failed to touch his pride,
worse yet that he had no pride? She had been longing so for
a cessation from all this bickering, so that they might have
time for a touch of tenderness.  But she could not afford
that now. His love for her was her strongest hold over
him. She was sure she could bring him back to reason.
Perhaps she had been a little severe last night, calling him
a coward.
"I musn't lose my temper," she told herself. Yet that was
the very thing she did. The matter took such a sudden, such
a grotesque turn.
He came in about eleven, his handsome face haggard, his
eyes bloodshot. She was astounded at his appearance.
"Peter, you look dreadful!"
He glanced over the top of her head at his reflection in the
mirror, lounged to the sofa, threw himself in the corner of it.
"Guess I'm due to look a fright after staying up all night.
Didn't get to bed till five this morning.
She thought he'd been worrying over their quarrel. "You
poor boy, you didn't need to take it that hard."
He stared at her. "Take what, that hard? Oh, our talk!
That didn't keep me awake. I spent the night at 'Jake's.' "
"Jake's" was the cabaret, a cheap one, in which he had played
years ago.
She couldn't understand him. "I thought you had plenty
of money without playing there."
"I have. I didn't play there. I was a visitor like anybody
else, like Harry Portor; he spent the night there, too. There
was a whole gang of us."



THERE IS CONFUSION


159


THEREIS CNFUSIN    15




Clearly she must get to the bottom of this. While she had
been tossing sleepless, he had been in a cabaret, dancing with
cheap women, laughing, drinking perhaps.
"You mean you deliberately went there to have a good time
and stayed all night? You and Harry Portor and the rest
drank, I suppose?"
"I don't think Portor did. He's a full-fledged doctor now,
though he's hardly any practice yet. But the rest of us did.
There's nothing in that, Joanna, fellow's got to get to know
the world."
Her anger rose, broke. She lost her dignity.
"I suppose Maggie Ellersley taught you that, too."
"What's that?" His handsome face lowered. "Say, how'd
Maggie Ellersley get into this?  No, she never taught me
anything. But I can tell you what, if a fellow were going
with her and went during his holidays to have a spree at a
cabaret she wouldn't nag him about it, like you nag me.
Yes, about that and about a thousand other things."
She turned into ice. "I'll never nag you again. Here, take
this thing!" She drew off the little ring. "I don't want it."
A pin dropping would have crashed in that silence.
His voice came back to him. "You don't mean this, Joanna,
-you can't."
"I do. Here, take it."
"You-you mean the engagement is broken?" He ignored
her outstretched hand.
She dropped the ring in his pocket. "I mean I can't consider a man for a husband who throws away his career because of the meanness of a few white men. Of a man who
sits all night in a low cabaret where every loafer in New
York can point him out and say, 'That's the kind of fellow
Joanna Marshall goes about with.'"
"Oh, I see, it isn't for my sweet sake, then!"



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THERE IS CONFUSION


She pushed him toward the door. "Go, Peter! Go!"
On New Year's morning he came back, humble, contrite.
"I was a fool, Joanna. I must have been mad. Please forgive me."
"Of course I do, Peter."
He fumbled in his pocket, held out the ring. "Will you take
this back? "
"I can't do that."
"When will you?"
"I don't know if ever."
There was a long silence. He came over and put his hand
on the back of her chair, afraid to touch her.
"Joanna, I don't deserve your love. But you still do love
me?"
She nodded slowly.
His face brightened at that. "But you won't take back the
ring?"
"No, Peter, I can't take back the ring."
He knelt and kissed- her hands.
"Good-by, sweetheart, I must go to Philadelphia to-day.
Happy New Year, Joanna."
She let him go then. None of their other partings had ever
been like this. Safe in her room she cried herself sick. "Oh,
Peter," she murmured to herself, "come back like the boy I
used to know." She wished now that she had been easier
with him.
"And yet if I were, he'd let go entirely. Well, it must come
out all right." But her heart was heavy.
The very next day she got a letter. Peter must have written
her as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia.
"Joanna, I was wrong," he had written contritely, "I confess I had got away somewhat from your manner of thinking, and I suppose I was a little sore, too,-your life seems



THERE IS CONFUSION                  161
so full. Sometimes I think there is nothing I can bring you.
But I do love you, Joanna. You must always believe that
and I think you love me, too. We were meant for each other.
I am sure life would hold for us the deepest, most irremedi..
able sorrow if we separated. Whether we are engaged or not,
just tell me that you love me still and I can be happy."



CHAPTER XVIII


IF she had only answered the letter, then, that very moment!
But she had said to her impulse: "No, I must wait.
I can't let him off too easily." Perhaps, too, there was a little
sense of satisfaction at having him again at her knees, suing
for her favors, but this was secondary. Joanna was really
sick at heart to think that her beautiful dreams of success for
both of them might not be realized. She wanted to be great
herself, but she did not want that greatness to overshadow
Peter.
Somehow the week slipped by, quickly enough, too. There
was always plenty to do. Love,-the desire to give it and
receive it was tugging persistently at the cords of her being,
but she had been too long the slave of Ambition to listen
consciously to that. Yet she found herself lying awake nights
thinking, thinking, more about Peter than about her singing
engagements during the New Year, or about her plan to make
her mightiest efforts just now to enter the dancing world.
Yet whatever she might ponder by night, she spent all her
time and strength by day going to see performances, practicing, inventing new steps and new rhythms.
Through Helena Arnold and indirectly through Vera
Sharples she obtained the promise of an interview with one
of the season's favorites.
"I'll be able to see you early Thursday evening," the famous
woman wrote. "You may expect either a note or a telephone
call from me." At one time such a promise would have sent
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163


Joanna into the seventh ecstasy, without impairing her confidence. But recent discouragements, persistent-and for her
unusual, phenomena-had rendered her timid. She was nervous. Her assurance wavered. She spent the whole day going
through her repertory. Sometimes she danced like a maenad.
Then she adopted a slow Greek rhythm, posturing and undulating. She struck attitudes before the mirror, standing
in one position for long moments.
"For Heaven's sake," said Sylvia, putting her head inside
the door on one of these occasions, "go out and take a walk,
Joanna." She was as nervous as her sister.
"Not a bad idea, Sylvia, I believe I will. You can answer
the phone. Have you seen my brown cape?"
She came back a little after five, refreshed and soothed.
"No phone message," Sylvia told her, "but here's a note.
What's she got to say, Janna?" She came and looked over
her sister's arm.
"So sorry not to be able to see you to-night," the noted
artiste had written. "I'm halfway expecting an old friend of
mine and must keep the evening free. I shall try to arrange
to have you call, just the same, not this month I'm afraid,
but certainly in February." She ended with a meaningless
expression of "good wishes."
"Mercy," said Sylvia, "why didn't she say next year?"
Joanna was bitter. "Or next eternity? Sylvia, I wonder
if I'm not a darn fool!"  She walked upstairs trailing her
long brown cape after her.
All her life she had known and seen success. When she
was born her father was a successful caterer, almost a wealthy
man. It is true that she had seen her own people hindered,
checked on account of color, but hardly any of the things she
had greatly wanted had been affected for that cause. She had
had money enough to have her dancing and music lessons
-the very fact that she had had to take separate and special



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lessons from Bertully meant to her that some special and
separate way would be arranged whereby she would become
a dancer on the stage.
She did not know how to envisage disappointment.
Strangely enough, the defection of the artiste struck home
to her more keenly than the reception which she had had from
the stage-managers. She refused Sylvia's invitation to come
back downstairs and spend the evening with her and Brian.
"We might go to a movie," Sylvia had said tentatively.
But Joanna had only made an impatient gesture of refusal,
and walking into her room had closed the door very carefully after her.
She did not cry or throw herself across the bed. It might
have been better for her if she had. Joanna's creed was that
one kept a stiff upper lip even to oneself. She had not had
many occasions to try out that creed.
There she sat, stiffly, on the spindling chair in front of her
small flat-topped writing desk and brooded over the future
which suddenly stretched dull, stale, and uninvigorating before
her. She would never be able to stand it.
The thought of her marriage flashed across her mind.
"And Peter," she said to herself aloud, "willing to be ordinary and second-rate! Where is that letter of his? I might
just as well answer it now as at any other time."
In spite of her ugly mood a little wave of tenderness welled
up in her heart as she read,-"Just tell me that you do love
me still,
"Oh, Peter, Peter," she murmured, "if I tell you that you'l
never change, never push on. If only you could be strong
and let me bring my troubles to you."
It would never do to let him know how completely she wjs
discouraged. And equally she could not let him know how
dear, weakness and all, he was to her. She would make her
love conditional. "If you want me to love you, Peter,-"



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165


She hated that, but some day they would both be glad of it.
She actually cried for the two of them as she wrote her stern
little fiction:
"DEAR PETER:
"No, I don't love you as you are. The man I marry must be a
man worth while like my father or Philip. I couldn't stand the
thought of spending my life with some one ordinary.
"But I want to love you, Peter. Write me soon and say you are
going to get to work in earnest. Happy New Year.
"Sincerely,
"JOANNA."
She read it over and over, totally blind to its supreme
egotism. Then she sealed it and, sniffling a little-more like
a child than like an artist-went to bed.
In the morning she awoke with a sense of impending disaster. The phrase is trite but so, alas, is disaster. At first, as
she lay there, her slender brown arms stretched above her
tumbled head, she mused to herself about it.
"Let's see why I do feel so rotten?  What's the matter?"
She remembered her engagement with the artiste. "But
that's not what's making me sick," she told herself after a
momentary probing of her self-consciousness. Then recalling the letter to Peter, she got up and walked bare-footed
across the room to the desk, shivering a little as the chilly
January morning air struck at her, billowing her thin nightdress. She thought she would read it again, but the envelope
was sealed. It slipped out of her hand and she ran back to
bed again, cuddling luxuriously.
"Oh, well!" Afterwards when she rose and closed the windows she promised herself: "If I do send it I'll write him a
sweet, sweet letter soon."
After breakfast she posted it. It fell with a heaviness into
the box that made her uneasy. "I'll write him again to



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THERE IS CONFUSION


night," she thought. "Poor Peter! He'll be disappointed,
I suppose."
But the night brought her several offers to sing in Southern
schools which she thought she might just as well accept. Apparently nothing was to come of her dancing. She had about
a week in which to get ready.
Just before she left, a little surprised that she had not
already heard from Peter, she wrote him a long letter, her
first long love-letter.
"Dearest Peter [she began]
"You can't think how awfully I want to see you. If you were here
to-night I shouldn't quarrel with you one moment."
She quoted lines from   one of Goethe's poems.
"Ein blick von deinen Augen in die meinen,
Ein Kuss von deinen Mund auf meinem Munde:
She hesitated a moment, a little aghast at this disclosure of
her feelings. "But I might just as well, he deserves it. Dear,
dear Peter, if I could just see you!"
She ended, smiling shamefacedly at her own abandon"Mein einzig Gliick auf Erden ist dein Wille"She might have stopped in Philadelphia on her way South,
but she couldn't after that letter. In Richmond she received
a note from Peter which Sylvia had forwarded.
"My dear Joanna [she was surprised at the formality]
"I have both your letters. I cannot tell you how surprised I was
at receiving the first or how much I cherished the second. Joanna,
I would give ten years of my life if you had written the second one
first. I am very busy now but I am going to write you a final letter
very soon.
"Sincerely,
"PETER."



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167


"'A final letter,' " she quoted to herself. "What a funny
thing to say!  Oh, Peter!  And I wanted, I needed a real letter, a love-letter!" Her natural reasonableness helped her.
"It's my own fault. I suppose he feels like I feel sometimes,
don't-care-y. But 'a final letter.' I wonder what he meant!"
But she did not puzzle long. Richmond was appreciative and
gay. Some one wrote her from Hampton and asked her to
do an interpretative dance. Partly because of the interest and
excitement, partly because she had forced herself to do so
often, she resolutely put Peter out of her mind.
"He'll know when I write him again," she told herself ruefully.
Two weeks, a month passed; she came into her room one
day to find a bulky letter from Sylvia. "He doesn't mean
it, Joanna, of course, but I had to send it." Thus her sister's
note. Puzzled, she read the inclosure, which turned out to be
a letter from Peter to Sylvia.
"DEAR SYLVIA:
"I am writing to let you know that I am to be married in June.
Joanna told me she didn't love me and so I am going to marry Maggie
Neal; she's crazy about me. Tell Joanna not to bother sending back
any of the things I've given her.
"Sincerely,
"PETER."



CHAPTER XIX


ONE of the mysteries of the ages will be solved with the
answer to the question: Why do men consider women
incalculable? Peter had been hurt by Joanna's indifference again and again, she had refused a dozen times to
marry him, she had scolded him, teased him, slighted him.
Yet she had always come back to his eager arms. In spite
of this he had been unable to see in her attitude at Christmas
and in the unkind letter which she had written the logical outcome of her earlier acts-all of which by enduring he had
tacitly indorsed.
He read the letter in a maze of anger and wounded pride.
Before he knew it he had caught up his cap and started for
Maggie's house. By the time the long, yellow, crawling car
had jolted him over the uneven reaches of Lombard Street
and set him down at Fifteenth he was in a fever of bitterness,
resentment and self-pity. Maggie hardly knew him when he
entered her little sitting-room.
"Oh, Peter," she went up to him swiftly, "something awful
has happened."
He showed her the letter, striding up and down the room
as she read it.
She lifted her head to say to him: "She doesn't mean it;
you know Joanna, always making a mountain out of a molehill."
Instead she heard herself saying: "How could she possibly
write such things to you-you've always been so kind."
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169


"Too kind," he muttered. "I tell you what, Maggie, Joanna's got no heart, she's all head, all ideas and if you don't
see and act her way, she's got no use for you."
"I do think she thinks herself a lot better than any one
else," Maggie said slowly, remembering Joanna's letter to her
about Philip.
"Well, she is, you know," he put in unexpectedly. "Oh,
Lord, what am I going to do without her!"
Genuinely touched, she sat down on the little box-couch
beside him and slid her arm around his shoulder. "After all,
you've still got me, Peter."
He looked up at her, feeling the surge of a new idea in his
heart. If he could only punish Joanna-no not punish exactly, you couldn't punish her, she was always too remote for
that-but shock her\, let her see, as his boyhood's phrase
would have had it, that she was not the only pebble on the
beach. Besides, what a revenge to cut loose altogether from the
influence of her ideals and ally himself with one whom she
would have characterized as having no ideals at all.
Before the thought was even shaped in his brain he was
speaking:
"Of course I always have you, Maggie. How-how would
you like to spend your future with me?"
"What do you mean, Peter?"
"I mean, Joanna's chucked me. You and I get along famously, you've got your divorce from Neal. Why not marry
me?"
It was plain that though surprised she liked the idea. She
saw herself suddenly transformed in this inhospitable snobbish
city from Maggie Neal, alone and declassee, into Mrs. Peter
Bye, a model of respectability.
That he had no money, no accepted means of making a
livelihood she understood would mean nothing. He was a



170


THERE IS CONFUSION


Bye and she as his wife could go anywhere. She would show
Alice Talbert! And afterwards when he got his degree!
But because she had once loved Philip she could judge
what Peter might mean to Joanna. To her credit she hesitated.
"Joanna probably doesn't mean to let you go, Peter, she's
just angry and disappointed. She takes things harder than
Sylvia or I. You know she really cares about you, and so do
you about her."
But he assured her that he did not. "She's too exacting.
Now there's one thing about you, Maggie-maybe it's because
you've already been married-you know how to treat a man.
Joanna makes you feel as though you were in a strait-jacket
all the time. I always feel ordinary when I'm with you."
Neither of them noticed the doubtfulness of the compliment.
In the end she accepted him. After all, she owed nothing to
Joanna, who certainly had not considered her. How surprised
she would be to think that Peter could so quickly find solace
in her-Maggie's-arms! And Joanna should learn, too, that
he could become a success without everlastingly being pushed
and prodded.
Hard on this thought came another. "Peter, you won't
have to work so hard now to get through school. I'll help
you. You know I'm doing very well with the hair-work."
He dismissed the theme airily, one hand on her shoulder,
the other fumbling for a Gigarette.
"Oh, I'm going to give medicine up. I'll just keep on with
Tom and the music. Heavens, it's so nice to know you won't
mind, Maggie. Can't think why I've stuck to the old school
as long as I have, when here I am all set with this nice easy
job to my hand. Might as well get along with as little trouble
as possible. The world owes me a living."


*        *        *       *        *



THERE IS CONFUSION


171


Afterwards, back in his room with the green iron bedstead
and the Bye Bible, he felt a difference, a sense of let-downness. He threw himself across the bed and groaned
"Joanna, how could you?"
She could, that was evident. He was stupefied at the turn
in his affairs. Five hours ago he had expected some day to
be a physician and to marry Joanna Marshall. Now it seemed
that he was going to be a musician and marry Maggie Neal.
"It isn't true," he told himself, fiercely. But it was true.
There on the dresser were some cookies wrapped up in a red
and white fringed napkin, Maggie's gift when he left her.
"I made them for you, hoping you would come in. Now
you'll be in often, often, won't you? Oh, Peter, I'll be good
to you. I'll be as unlike Joanna as possible." He did not
want her to be unlike Joanna. In fact, he did not want her
at all.
He might as well take her, though, for Joanna did not
want him. That was it, no matter how many women he unaccountably married, Joanna might be shocked but she would
never really care. Or suppose she did care a little while, she
would soon forget it with her singing and dancing. Still, he
supposed he must tell her. He would write her a gay, mocking letter. "I hope you'll be as happy with your art as I feel
I shall be with Maggie. She suits me perfectly."
After he had littered his desk and the floor beside it vainly
with a veritable snow-storm of torn bits of paper, he let his
head drop on his lean brown hands and went to sleep. Perhaps it would not be exact to say he cried himself to sleep, but
there were certainly tears that burnt and scalded behind his
eyelids.
His landlady complained of the torn paper the next morning. "'Tisn't as though you didn't have a nice waste-paper
basket ready and waitin', Mr. Bye." As she finished speak



172           THERE IS CONFUSION
ing she handed him Joanna's letter containing Goethe's poem.
The tenderness, the real love that blazed in the beautiful lines
overwhelmed him. He could not tell her the truth after a letter like that. So he wrote her, postponing but hinting, he
fondly believed, at the news which he must soon break to
her. A month later, finding himself still unequal to the task,
he wrote to Sylvia.



CHAPTER XX


YLVIA   had   written.  "He  doesn't mean  it, of
course"
But Joanna knew better. Even while dumbfounded
she stood staring at the note, trying to believe there must be
some mistake, her heart, her every sense was telling her it
was too true.
Peter had given her up. He was going to marry Maggie.
He had given her up. That was the important thing. For
if he was not to marry her, what difference did it make whom
he married?
She had never been religious, she had never been dramatic.
Rather she somewhat despised any emphatically emotional
display. "People don't really act that way," she told herself.
Yet she dropped on her knees beside the pine bedstead in
the sparsely furnished room. Her hands clutched at the
counterpane. She could feel her throat constricting. A scalding hotness seared her nostrils, her mouth became dry, her
eyeballs burned.
"Oh, God!   Oh, Peter!"  She repeated the two phrases
again and again in a sick agony.
"God, you couldn't let it be true. You know I always loved
him, I didn't hide it from you. You knew my heart."
At first she thought she would go to him. Then the fear
that he might not want to see her, might even refuse to see
her, overcame her. That humiliation she could never endure.
She sat down and wrote him a long letter, her pen flying
'73



174i


THERE IS CONFUSION


over the page like something bewitched. It could not move
fast enough to empty her heart of all she had to tell. If she
could only make clear to him that she had "chastened" him
because she loved him. How patronizing, how silly she had
been. She said aloud, "How he and Maggie must have laughed
at me, setting myself up above them and their ideas as though
I were some goddess! Oh, God, why did you let me do it?
You knew what I really meant."
Her tears almost blotted out her words.
The post-office was a mile away but she trudged the distance mechanically, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed
and drowned in the black sorrow which overwhelmed her.
Peter's answer, which came in four days, brought no solace.
She had never dwelt on any pages as she did on those of his
last letter. The curt, stern phrases both cut her and awakened
a new respect for him.
With a sense of responsibility which Joanna had never seen
in him before, he insisted on honoring the claim which Maggie's complete and unexacting love made upon him. "Even if
I wanted to give her up," he wrote in a sort of anguished
virtuousness, "I would not, she has been too kind to me. But
I don't want to give her up, Joanna. Besides, I've got to
consider the public. She has told several people that we are
engaged."
Joanna cried aloud: "If you had only been like- this before, ever before, only once, I'd have known I couldn't trifle
with you. Oh, Peter, you deceived me." The tears stood, great
wells of water about her eyes.
She finished her engagement in the quiet Southern city
before an audience which wondered vaguely what had happened to make Joanna Marshall different. Somehow she
packed her trunk, thanked the persistent youth who had constituted himself her cavalier, and boarded the Jim Crow car.
Her cavalier for all his persistence had been unable to obtain



THERE IS CONFUSION


175


for her Pullman accommodations. After Washington she fell
to wondering what it used to be like in other days, less than
a year ago, when she would be coming up this way, through
Baltimore, Wilmington, past Chester, secure in the knowledge
that Peter would be waiting for her at West Philadelphia. He
would never be there again! How could she endure it? It
was not possible that anyone could stand this thing. No
wonder people "crossed in love" she dwelt on the phrase
distastefully-killed themselves. She toyed with the idea.
Of course she couldn't; that sort of relief was not for her.
In the first place it was cowardly. With her usual mental
clarity she visualized the colored papers of Harlem. There
would be notices telling how the "gifted singer, Joanna Marshall, daughter of Joel Marshall, died by her own hand "
Her mind lingered over it, painting in new details, consciously withdrawing as far as possible from the real cause
of her grief.
As the train slid into the long shed at West Philadelphia
she pressed her face against the window-pane and strained
out into the dusk. Sometimes miracles did occur. Perhaps
he was there, perhaps none of it was true. Her tears crept
down the glass, the man behind her watching curiously.
Sylvia met her in New York, got her home and finally to
bed. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall knew nothing of the matter and
Sylvia had told even Brian very little. The two girls said
nothing about Peter directly.
"Help me to get to sleep, Sylvia," Joanna said suddenly
after a rambling account of her trip. Her roving eyes and
twitching hands had already betrayed her need. "Help me
to get to sleep or I think I shall go mad."



CHAPTER XXI


JOANNA was in agony. Her life, hitherto a thing of light
and laughter and pleasant work, became a nightmare of
regret and morbid introspection. She could not blame
herself enough. Nothing that Sylvia could say would make
her speak unkindly of Peter.
"No, Sylvia, it wasn't his fault, really, it was all mine.
Of course I think he was a little stupid not to see that my
very interest in him, my constant fault-finding grew out of my
wish to have him perfect. And I wanted him to be perfect
because I loved him. But if I had ever dreamed how much
I was hurting him, I'd never have said a word to him. I'd
rather have had him exactly as he was, faults and all, than
to lose him altogether."
She suffered intensely, too, from Wounded pride., "Just
think, Sylvia, he didn't, he couldn't have loved me after all.
He just wanted to get married. See how easily he turned
from me. Oh, if I had known that was all he wished, I'd have
been different. I'd have been just the kind of woman he
wanted."
Her humble sincerity almost made Sylvia cry.
Another girl in Joanna's place might not have suffered so
intensely. But Joanna, poor creature, was doomed by her
very virtues. That same single-mindedness which had made
her so engrossed in her art, now proved her undoing. Her
mind, shocked out of its normal complacence, perceived and
dwelt on a new aspect of life, an entirely different and undreamed of sense of values. For the first time in her life she
176



THERE IS CONFUSION


177


saw the importance of human relationships. What did a
knowledge of singing, dancing, of any of the arts amount to
without people, without parents, brothers, sisters, lovers to
share one's failures, one's triumphs?
She remembered how interested, how faithfully interested
all her family had been in her small career. Even Brian
Spencer, now that her own brothers were away, felt responsible for her, shifted engagements to get her to the station
on time, met trains at ghastly, inconvenient hours of the night.
And Peter had been her slave, her willing, unquestioning slave,
eager to accomplish any task no matter how troublesome, for
a word of appreciation from her.
And without a thought she had taken all this as her due.
She had failed to realize happiness when she saw it. The
bird had been in her grasp and she had let it go. This was
her constant thought. Of course, she still had her.own people.
And she was considerate of them now, painfully anxious to
show her gratitude. She tried to stammer out an apology to
Sylvia for her past remissness.
But her sister threw an arm about her and strained her
close. "Don't be so thoughtful, so good, Jan. You break
my heart. I'd rather have you your old thoughtless, impatient
self."
Of course, this expression of gratitude was really only a
gesture to life, to fate. "If Peter could come back to me now,
he'd see how truly I cared about him. God, couldn't you
let him come back?" Joanna, who had hardly uttered a
prayer outside of "Now I lay me," spent most of her thoughts
at this time in communion with God-"You Great Power,
you great force, you whatever it is that rules things." Walking, riding, any action at all mechanical she utilized in concentrating on her "desire to have everything come right."
In the mornings, weak and spent with the wakefulness of



178


THERE IS CONFUSION


her white night, she picked up her little slim Bible and read
portions of the Psalms. The beautiful words not only soothed
her but brought with them a wonderment at the passion and
pain which they revealed. "David, you, too, suffered. Help
me, help me now." So intense was her thought that she
would hardly have been surprised if she had looked up and
seen the Psalmist bending over her.
She hated the mornings even more than the nights. In
spite of her wakefulness, she was sure that there were some
moments when she lapsed into unconsciousness. But the
morning brought with it the promise of another day of pain,
of unprofitable preoccupation. Sometimes after she had read
her Psalm, despite the fact that she had been tossing, tossing
on her pillow, she yielded to an overwhelming sense of apathy
and lay there motionless for hours in the security of her bed.
Her mental agony was so great at times that it seemed almost physical.
Her condition surprised Sylvia greatly. "I never had any
idea that Jan cared so much for Peter," she told Brian. She
'had had to share her sister's secret with him. Joanna's persistent sleeplessness had led Sylvia in her protecting eagerness
to pretend to Harry Portor that she herself was in need of a
sedative and Harry had spoken to Brian about it. There had
to be explanations.
Brian was not at all surprised at Joanna's suffering. "A girl
like Joanna would be bound to feel deeply or not at all. I
knew she must have really cared for Peter, else she'd have
chucked him long ago. Joanna did nag at him, but Peter
is really the one to blame, for standing for it. If he'd given
her a piece of his mind now and then she'd have understood
whom she had to deal with; Joanna thought she could treat
him as she pleased. Then when he got tired of it he threw
-up -the whole thing without any warning, the silly ass."



THERE IS CONJFUSION


179


"Better not let Joanna hear you call him that," Sylvia
interrupted.
He went on unnoticing. "Of course, what Joanna doesn't
realize is that she's up against the complex of color in Peter's
life. It comes to every colored man and every colored woman,
too, who has any ambition. Jan will feel it herself one day.
Peter's got it worse than most of us because he's got such a
terrible 'mad' on white people to start with. But every colored
man feels it sooner or later. It gets in the way of his dreams,
of his education, of his marriage, of the rearing of his children. The time comes when he thinks, 'I might just as well
fall back; there's no use pushing on. A colored man just
can't make any headway in this awful country.' Of course,
it's a fallacy. And if a fellow sticks it out he finally gets
past it, but not before it has worked considerable confusion
in his life. ' To have the ordinary job of living is bad enough,
but to add to it all the thousand and one difficulties which
follow simply in the train of being colored-well, all I've got
to say, Sylvia, is we're some wonderful people to live through
it all and keep our sanity."
Sylvia agreed soberly that he was right.
"Now, Peter," said Brian, warming to his subject, "had a
lot of natural handicaps, he was poor, he had no sense of responsibility, he was never too fond of work unless he had
some one to spur him on to it. In addition to that he falls
in love with a girl who has everything in the world which he
lacks, especially comparative ease and overwhelming ambition.
Jan doesn't see Peter and herself as two ordinary human beings, she thinks they have a high destiny to perform and
so she drives Peter into a course of action which left to himself he would never pursue. I'll bet a month's salary Peter
had no intention of studying surgery until he found out he
had to do something extraordinary to win Joanna. Now, just



180


THERE IS CONFUSION


1           TH        IS, C  N   SI
when each needs the most sympathy from the other, when
Joanna's plans are, I suspect, going awry, and when Peter is
suffering most from his color complex, the two let their frazzled
nerves carry them into a jangle and bang, Peter flies to the
first woman who promises to let him take life easy! Maggie
doesn't see life in the large, she's too much taken up with
getting what she wants out of her own life. Perhaps she's
right."
"I don't see how you can say that, Brian."
"Well, it all depends on one's viewpoint. Personally, I think
Peter will get what he deserves if he marries Maggie. She's
the one that astonishes me. Of course, if Peter and Jan really
are through with each other, he's got a perfect right to marry
whom he pleases, but I should think Maggie's old friendship
for you two girls would have held her back awhile." A memory stirred vaguely within him. "Or-no, that would really
be too rotten."
"What would?"
"Maggie, you know. Remember how suddenly she married
Neal? I've always thought Joanna had something to do with
that. Just the Sunday before, Maggie had given me a look-in
on her feelings for Philip and I happened to tell Jan about it.
My, how she raved! A few days later Maggie married her
gambler."
This was all news to Sylvia.
"Well, I won't tell Joanna. She's got enough to bear."
Joanna was indeed bearing more than Sylvia could guess.
She was feeling the pull of awakened and unsatisfied passion.
It is doubtful if she could thus have analyzed it, for she had
rather deliberately withheld her attention from the basic facts
of life. "Plenty of time for that," she had told herself gayly,
a little proud perhaps of a virginal fastidiousness which kept
her ignorant as well as innocent. Yet bit by bit she had



CHAPTER XXII


EN months later Tom Mason leaned back against the
red plush of the car seat and jingled some coins in
l.     his pocket.
"Tell you what, Bye, we really are cleaning up. I hadn't
expected anything like this run of engagements. Now suppose
you beat it along to Mrs. Lea's and find out what special
arrangements she wants made for the musicians to-night and
I'll go on to Mrs. Lawlor and see about to-morrow."
Peter stared moodily at the flying landscape. "I wish you'd
come yourself, Mason. I hate to talk to these white people.
Their damned patronizing airs make me sick."
"What do you care about their patronizing  All I'm interested in is gettin' what I can out of them. When I've made
my pile, if I can't spend it here the way I please, Annie and
me can pick up and go to South America or France. I hear
they treat colored people all right there."
"'Treat colored people all right,' " Peter mimicked. 'What
business has any one 'treating' us, anyway? The world's ours
as much as it is theirs. And I don't want to leave America.
It's mine, my people helped make it. These very orchards
we're passing now used to be the famous Bye orchards. My
grandfather and great-grandfather helped to cultivate them."
"Is that so? Honest?" Tom showed a sudden respectful
interest. "How'd they come to lose them?"
"Lose them? They never owned them. The black Byes
were slaves of the white Byes."
182



THERE IS CONFUSION


183


"Oh, slaves! Oh, you mean they worked in the fields?
Well, I guess that's different. Come on, here we are."
Peter flung himself out of the car after Tom and followed
him up a tree-lined street. The suburban town stretched calm,
peaceful and superior about them. Clearly this was the home
of the rich and well-born. It is true that a few ordinary
mortals lived here, but mainly to do the bidding of the
wealthy. A group of young white girls, passing the two men,
glanced at them a little curiously.
"Entertainers for the Lea affair," one of them said, making
no effort to keep from being overheard.
Peter stopped short. "That's what I hate," he said fiercely.
"Labeled because we're black."
"Ain't you got a grouch, thought" Tom spoke almost admiringly. He told his sister afterwards: "Bye's got this herenow-temper'ment. Never can tell how it's goin' to take him.
Seems different since he started keeping company with Maggie,
don't you think so?"
Annie admitted she did.
At present Tom patted Peter on the shoulder, and starting
him up the driveway which led to Mrs. Lea's large low white
house, went on himself to Mrs. Lawlor.
Mrs. Lea received Peter in a small morning-room. She was
pretty, a genuine blonde, with small delicate features and
beautiful fluffy hair. But as Peter did not like fair types, his
mind simply registered "washed-out," and took no further
stock of her looks. What he did notice was that she was
dressed in a lacey, too transparent floating robe, too low in
the neck, and too short in the skirt.
"Something she would wear only before some one for whom
she cared very much, or some one whom she didn't think worth
considering," he told himself, lowering.
Mrs. Lea, leading him into the ballroom beyond, barely
glanced at him. "See, the musicians are to sit behind those



184


THERE IS CONFUSION


palms and the piano will be completely banked with flowers.
I'm expecting the decorators every moment. Your men will
have to get here very early so as to get behind all this without
being seen. I want the effect of music instead of perfume
pouring out of the flowers. Do you get the idea-er-what
did you say your name was?"
"Yes, I understand," said Peter shortly. "My name is Bye."
"I meant your first name-Bye-why, that's the name of a
family in Bryn Mawr, who used to own half of the land about
here. There're a Dr. Meriwether Bye and his grandfather, Dr.
Meriwether Bye, living in the old Bye house now. Where do
you come from?"
"I was born in Philadelphia, like my father and grandfather
and his father before him."
She stated the obvious conclusion: "Probably your parents
belonged to the Bryn Mawr Byes."
"So my father told me," replied Peter, affecting a composure
equal to her own. "His name was Meriwether Bye."
She did not like that. She decided she did not like him
either-eyeing his straight, fine figure and meeting his unyielding look. These niggers with their uppish ways! Besides
this one looked, looked-indefinably he reminded her of young
Meriwether Bye. She spoke to him:
"I don't want you to leave to-night before I get a chance
to point youi out to young Dr. Bye. He'll be so interested."
She looked at Peter again. Yes, he was intelligent enough to
get the full force of what she wanted to say. "It's so in keeping with things that the grandson of the man who was slave
to his grandfather should be his entertainer to-night."
Peter felt his skin tightening. "I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm a medical student, not an entertainer. I came
here for Mr. Mason, who is very busy. You may be sure I'll
give him your instructions. Good-day, Mrs. Lea."
He rushed out of the house, down to the station where,



186


THERE IS CONFUSION


Morgan- "with their damned talk of entertainers." Down
the stairs he- ran, still talking.
"Mad, quite mad," said little Morgan, staring. "Glad he's
coming back to work, though. Now, where'd I put that cap?"
Still at white heat, Peter walked the few short blocks to
his boarding house. Once inside his room he shut himself in
and paced the floor.
"The grandson-that's me-of the man who was his grandfather's slaves should be his-that's Meriwether Bye, young
Dr. Meriwether Bye-should be his entertainer, his hired
entertainer.
"My grandfather didn't have a chance, but here I am half
a century after and I'm still a slave, an entertainer. My
grandfather. Let's see, which one of the Byes was that?"
He went to the closet, pushed some books and papers aside
and hauled down the old Bye Bible. The leaves, streaked and
brown, stuck together. With clumsy, unaccustomed fingers
he turned them, until at last between the Old Testament and
the Apochrypha he found what he was looking for: "Record
of Births and Deaths."
The old, stiff, faded writing with the long German s, the
work of hands long since still, smote him with a sense of worthlessness. These people, according to their lights, must have
considered themselves "people of importance,>" else why this
careful record of dates?
His lean brown finger traced the lines. "Joshua Bye, born
about I78o"-heavens, that must have been his great-greatgrandfather. No, maybe he was just a "great," for the black
Byes, he remembered hearing his father Meriwether say, lived
long and married late.
"Isaiah Bye, born i830-a child of freedom." How proud
they had been of that! Yes, that was his grandfather, he
remembered now. And he had made a great deal of that
freedom. Meriwether had often dwelt with pride on Isaiah's



THERE IS CONFUSION


187


THR ISCNUSO           8




learning, his school, his property, his "half-interest," Meriwether had said grandiloquently, in a bookshop. Peter could
hear his father talking now.
"A child of freedom"-Peter was that but what had he
made of it? He wondered what Isaiah in turn had written on
the occasion of Meriwether's birth. His finger ran down the
page, and found it, stopped.
There it was-"Meriwether," the inscription read, "by his
fruits shall ye know-me."
At first Peter thought it was a mistake. Then gradually it
dawned on him-his fine old grandfather, proud of his achievements, seeing his son as a monument to himself, seeing each
Bye son doubtless as a monument to each Bye father. Poor
Isaiah, perhaps happy Isaiah, for having died before he realized
how worthless, how anything but monumental his son had
really been, except as a failure. And now he, Peter, was following in that son's footsteps.
He remembered an old daguerreotype of his grandfather
that he had seen at his great-uncle Peter's. The face, perfectly black, looked out from its faded red-plush frame with
that immobile look of dignity which only black people can
attain. "I have made the most of myself," the proud old face
seemed to say. "My father was a slave, but I am a teacher, a
leader of men. My son shall be a great healer and my son's
son-"
Peter put the open Bible carefully on the table and took out
a cigarette. But he held it a long time unlighted.
So far as he could remember he had never had any desire
to rise, "to be somebody," as Isaiah, he rightly guessed, would
have phrased it. He saw himself after his mother's death, a
small placid boy, perfectly willing to stay out of school. Until
he met Joanna. There was his term of service in the butchershop and himself again perfectly willing to be the butcher's
assistant. Until Joanna's questioning had made him declare



CHAPTER XXIII


IT had been increasingly easy for him to forget her. When
he had first broken with Joanna, when he had written her
that virtuous letter, Maggie's rooms, Maggie's arms were
a haven. She was always ready to listen, always sympathetic.
She met his advances half way; if he asked for a kiss he got
it at once. There was none of Joanna's half-real, half-coquettish withdrawal. No one could accuse Maggie of a lack of
modesty. Peter would have been the first to fight such an
accuser, but he found himself half-wishing that she were not
quite so easy to approach.
Somehow life grew less stimulating. Presently they were
settling down into the cosy, prosy existence of the long married couple. In the afternoons Peter came in-he was usually
playing with Tom at night-they exchanged a word of greeting. Maggie gave him a dutiful kiss; there would be a word
or two about the weather, his playing engagements, then
silence. Presently Peter would say: "Mind if I look over
the paper a moment, Maggie? I got up late this morning."
And Maggie's bright answer: "Oh, of course not, I've got
my accounts to run over."
Somehow all the easy, "understanding" conversation had
vanished. Joanna, Maggie had soon learned, was not a welcome topic. And Peter no longer went to his classes, so
there was no possible therme there.  Peter to his disgust
found himself drawing unwilling contrasts between these
seances and similar moments spent with Joanna. Had there
ever been any silences? If there were they were filled with
I89



190


THERE IS CONFUSION




all sorts of tingling thoughts and meanings.  There was
the night when Joanna leaned against him in Morningside Park.
They had said nothing. But the very air about them was
pulsing. How long ago all that seemed! Had it ever been
true? Why had he never felt like that when Maggie, as she
frequently did, rested her head on his shoulder?
He would shake himself angrily out of his reverie. "Silly
ass," his lips formed.
Maggie seeing his lips move would ask him interestedly:
"What's the matter, Peter?"
"Nothing at all," he'd tell her contritely. What should be
the matter with his dear Maggie so near? Sometimes he put
an arm around her shoulder. "Look here, I've got an hour
yet. Like to go out?"
That never failed to please her. She loved to be seen with
him. She had a very charming, flattering air of deference, of
dependence when she was out. It was singularly pleasing and
yet puzzling to Peter. Joanna now was just as likely to cross
the street as not, without waiting for a guiding hand, a protecting arm. If she had once visited a locality she knew quite
as much about getting away from it as her escort.  But
Maggie was helpless, dependent. Strange when they were all
growing up together he would have said she was quite as independent in her way as Joanna, and she was decidedly capable
in her- hair-dressing work. Madame Harkness' business had
increased considerably in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Peter had often mused over this.
He had known for some time that he did not- love Maggie.
But he could not tell whether or not she loved him. Certainly
she had appeared to at first, and certainly even now she clung
to 1im. Her very submissiveness would seem to indicate some
depth of feeling. He remembered Maggie as being anything
but yielding in their earlier days, and she had never apparently
changed one iota in her resentment toward her husband. She



THERE IS CONFUSION


191


was making a remarkably good living from her connection
with Madame Harkness, had bought the house in New York
and was contributing to her mother. She could not be marrying him to be taken care of.
Of course he knew nothing of her flair, her passion for being
connected with "real" people-for "class" as he would have
called it. And if he had known this, it would have explained
nothing to him, for he never thought of himself in this sense.
His most frequent source of worry consisted in wondering if
Maggie realized how lukewarm his feeling was for her. Apparently she never suspected it.
Maggie may not have let Peter realize it, but she was completely aware that he did not love her. She understood, had
always understood, that Joanna was the one woman in the
world for him. Having loved Joanna once there was no possibility of his caring about any one else. She had recognized in
Peter's turning to her a manifestation of the state of mind
which had led her at the time of her marriage to turn to
Henderson Neal.
Her acceptance of Peter had been almost spontaneous, yet
it was governed subconsciously by two or three motives. First
of all, while she thought it extremely probable that Joanna
liked, even loved Peter, she did not believe that Joanna would
ever consider marriage with him as important as her art.
Therefore she might just as well take him. Then she enjoyed
the artistic fitness of showing Joanna that a girl whom the
latter did not consider worthy to marry her brother was deemed
worthy to marry her lover. And last and most important,
Maggie saw through Peter a second means of entrance into
the society of "real" people. She had glimpsed this once
through the possibility of marriage with Philip.  Instead
Henderson Neal had closed this entrance to her, she had once
believed, forever. She must not fail to take advantage of this
new avenue.



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THERE IS CONFUSION


Already she was beginning to reap its value. Miss Alice
Talbert, it is true, became colder than ever when Maggie's
engagement to Peter was known. She told Arabelle Morton
that she considered "Peter done for, ruined, if he married that
gambler's wife. Cousin Joanna did well to get rid of him."
But Arabelle herself had laughed, had said she wanted to meet
the girl who had captured "that good-looking Bye boy." She
had come to see Maggie, had invited her to the Morton house.
Her good-natured shallowness, her frank determination not to
be a "high-brow" and her complete social assurance captivated
Maggie. Arabelle was of as unimpeachable standing as Miss
Talbert, though her choice of friends was not so exclusive.
Maggie was "taken up" by the young women of Arabelle's
set and henceforth her lines were comparatively easy. Still
she met with an occasional snub from the older women. Mrs. t
Viny, who turned out to be the terrible old lady who had asked /
her about Mr. Neal in Atlantic City, refused grimly to recog-!
nize her and gave it as her opinion that "Peter's doings would
make Isaiah Bye turn over in his grave-yet. You mark
my word."
Her hearers got a vision of the dust and nothingness which,
for many years, had been Isaiah Bye, slowly shifting its position in the narrow quarters of his tomb.
Maggie had her own plans. She did not mean to have
Peter following forever in Tom Mason's train. But after they
had married she would bring about a change. She was sure
she could coax him. It would never do to let Joanna think,
she would tell him, that he could not achieve distinction without her. And when Peter Bye became Dr. Bye, the famous
surgeon, Philadelphia would find that Mrs. Peter Bye had a
long memory.
Only Peter, who at first had agreed to marry in June, now
some months later seemed in no haste to marry at all-that
was the rub.



THERE IS CONFUSION


13




When she telephoned him on the day on which he had had
his interview with Mrs. Lea, she made up her mind to hasten
the marriage.
He came to see her the next afternoon full of his scheme of
returning to his classes. Maggie noticed a difference.
"You look as though you'd inherited a fortune or found a
million dollars."
"I have. My senses have come back to me. What do you
think, Maggie? I've chucked all this foolishness with Tom
Mason. My, I bet he's cursing mad. I'm getting down to
brass tacks; went back to my classes this morning."
Surprise and something else altered her face.
"What's the matter, you don't like it?"
"Yes-of course-only, but Peter, can't you see how hard
all this is for me?"
He got up, fiddled with the things on the mantel, turned
about and faced her, the knuckles straining a little in the hand
with which he grasped the back of a chair.
"Just what do you mean, Maggie? What's hard?"
She told him then that his going back to school naturally
meant a postponement of their marriage. "Oh, Peter, can't
you see I want to be safe like other women, with a home and
protection? I met Henderson, Henderson Neal, uptown Saturday-I didn't mean to tell you-but he glared at me. He
made me shiver, I wished you were with me. I'm afraid of
him, Peter, I'll never be safe till we're married."
His level voice answered her: "I can see to your safety,
Maggie; if Neal really frightens you, I can have him bound
over to keep the peace. But we can't marry now, dear. I
want to be able to take care of my-my wife. And if I go
back to my classes, I'll need all the money I can lay hands on.
I've lost so much time that I can't afford to do any outside
work. I'll just live on what I've made with Mason. But



194


THERE IS CONFUSION


that will leave me pretty poor. You see, I've got to have five
hundred dollars cold for my instruments."
She. looked at him speechless, her gray eyes going black in
the pale gold of her face, her hands submissively folded.
He took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"If you don't mind, Maggie, I think we'd better discuss this
later. Suppose we think it over for two or three days, and
then we'll settle upon something." His voice, infinitely gentle,
infinitely sorry for her, trailed off into silence.
She said listlessly: "I think I'll go to New York for a
while. I think I'd like to be with my mother."
He ignored the pathos of this. "That would be fine. How
soon do you want to go?"
"To-morrow, she told him. "You needn't come to the
station with me, Peter, you'd hardly have time to make it.
I won't take much, so I can manage."
He felt himself a cad for agreeing with her. "It's too bad
I have to go now, but I've got to read over some notes with
Morgan. So this is good-by for the present.  Aren't you
going to kiss me, Maggie?"
She held up her face for her dutiful kiss.



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197


-


suddenly decided; that was the word. She went on quickly:
"See here, you work somewhere down in this neighborhood,
don't you? Where- do you suppose I can get something to
eat, without walking a thousand miles for it?"
Vera frowned thoughtfully. "You see, I'm 'passing' just
now-I know you've heard of it-and so I go into any of
these places around here, but I never see any colored people.
Of course you could try the Automat."
But Joanna didn't want that.
"Their food's all right when you feel like eating it, but I
want a regular dinner-waiter, service, and all the rest of it.
Pick out a good place for me and I'll take you to dinner, too.
Nothing could be fairer than that."
Vera agreed smilingly that it couldn't. "There's a place
over on Forty-second Street. I remember now I have seen some
colored people in there and they get decent treatment. We
could go there-" she checked herself a moment. "Oh, no, I
forgot."
"Forgot what?"
"Look here, Janna, I might as well be frank, we were all of
us children together-doesn't it seem ages ago? You know I
wouldn't ever try to fool you. But the truth of it is I go to
that particular restaurant often with the other girls in my
office and of course the restaurant people think I'm-I'm
white. See? I don't know just what they'd think if they saw
me with you-some one who definitely showed color-or what
might come of it. You don't think I'm a pig, Joanna?"
"I think I'd he a pig if I did think so," Joanna told her
heartily. "Come on and take dinner with me over at the
Pennsy station. It'll be nice to have a talk."
The twQ girls moved down Fortieth Street in the direction of
Seventh Avenue.
"You'd understand it better if you worked among themwhite people you know," Vera told her seriously. "Of course



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THERE IS CONFUSION


I suppose there must be some decent ones, not the high-brow
philanthropists and all that crowd, but people who have too
much breeding, too much innate-well, niceness, I guess you'd
call it, to make light of folks just because they're different.
But that crowd in my office, they never think of being courteous to a colored person.  If they want the janitor it's
'Where's that darky?' or 'I saw a coon in the subway this
morning wearing a red tie, made me think of Jim here,'
always something like that. Of course they don't say it to
the man's face. There'd be a fight if they did."
"I don't see how you stand it," Joanna puzzled. "What
put it in your head to work with white people, anyhow?"
"Oh, to get away from everybody and everything I'd ever
known." They were at the table in the dining-room now and
Vera was making criss-cross marks with her fork on the white
cloth, frowning absorbedly.
"You know, Joanna, I wasn't like you-not one of us girls
was. I was more like Sylvia, I wanted a good time, but most
of all I wanted, I expected to marry. You remember Harley
Alexander?"
Joanna did remember him, indeed, a tall personable youth
about her own color, a companion of Harry Portor, Brian
Spencer, and to a less degree of her own brother Alec. But
what she especially remembered was that he had been the
qonstant shadow of Vera Manning.
"Of course I remember him, Vera. He's a dentist now, isn't
he? Didn't he graduate the same year as Harry Portor?"
"Yes, that's the fellow. Joanna, we really loved each other,
and we planned even before he went to college to get married
as soon as he came out. But as soon as my mother-you
know how color-struck she is-realized we were in earnest, up
she went in the air. None of her children should marry a
dark man. It only meant unhappiness. If Harley and I



THERE IS CONFUSION




should have children they'd be brown and would have to be
humiliated like all other colored children."
She fell to drawing more designs.
"We had a terrible time. I was completely alone in my
fight. Father always follows mother's lead. Brother' Tom
refused to commit himself. Alice is just like mother-she
really liked, I'm sure of it, John Hamilton, but because he was
dark, she let him go for Howard Morris, whom I can't stand.
For a long time I managed to keep it from Harley but the
Christmas of his last year in college, mother told him she
didn't favor his attentions to me, and told him why."
"Goodness," Joanna breathed, "that must have been awful."
"Awful! It was unspeakable. And nothing I could say to
Harley could destroy the effect of what she said. She must
have put it up to him as to whether he thought he could compensate a wife for the estrangement of her family. You know
how Harley was. We had always been a remarkably united
family up to that time. He said: 'If your mother objected to
my being poor I could tell her that I could change that, but
when it comes to my color, I can't do anything with that andy
by God, I wouldn't if I could.'
"So that," Vera ended wryly, "was the end ot my young
romance."
Bit by bit she made Joanna see the picture of her life since
her break with her lover. Before then she had worked in her
father's office, but now she was secretary to one of the heads
of a big advertising agency. As she was an unusually swift
stenographer and had a level head, she- was getting along
famously.
"Of course they think I'm white. There are a lot of young
men in the office and I flirt with them outrageously. At first
I did it only to annoy mother, she hated it so. You know,
the funny thing is she doesn't like white people any better than



THERE IS CONFUSION


I - ' ' - - L- '- -


I do-she just didn't want me to marry a dark man because,
she says, in this country a white skin is such an asset."
"Do you enjoy yourself going about?"
"Yes and no. When I began I did immensely. You can't
imagine-I couldn't-the almost unlimited opportunities that
those people have for work, for pleasure, f-r anything. As a
white girl I've seen sights and places, yes, and eaten food that
I never even knew about when I used to go out with Harley.
And then, too, Jan, you can't imagine the blessedness of no
longer being uncertain whether you can enter such and such
a hotel, or of getting a decent berth if you're going traveling
or of little things like that, the sudden removal of thousands
of pin-pricks, not only that, of inconveniences."
"You must be very happy," Joanna said wistfully.
"No, I'm not. They aren't, either. That's the funny part.
Oh, of course I suppose nobody is actually happy, but I do
think that colored people, when they're let alone long enough
to have a good time, know how to enjoy themselves better than
any other people in the world. It's a gift."
"I should think you'd drop it all, Vera."
"I would if it weren't for the sense of freedom. It's wonderful to be able to do as you like. Sometimes I think I will
drop it, then I think: 'Oh, pshaw, what difference does it
make?' Without Harley I'm bound to be unhappy, anyway,
even if I do go back to my own. Since I can't have happiness
I might just as well take up my abode where I can have the
most fun and comfort even though it's making me-well, no
saint, I can tell you." She laughed recklessly. "I wish I
were like you, Joanna."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you know-here ever since you were little you've
had Peter Bye right at your beck and call-you must have
loved him, Jan, he was so everlastingly good-looking, and
charming, too, we all thought. I remember he took me to a



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THERE IS CONFUSION


ate longing quickened to a sudden resolve. She would write
to Maggie-Maggie, who could not possibly love Peter. And
even if she did, she could not love him as she-Joanna-loved
him. Why, there had been Philip once, and then Henderson
Neal! - Whereas Peter had been the only love of her own
life.
She would write to Maggie, very clearly, very frankly and
she would beg her to let him go. It all seemed simple enough.
And then she and Peter would be happy. She would make him
love her again, worship her. And "Peter," she would tell him,
"never another unkind word, I'll be a new Joanna, darling."
Her father's house, its windows darkened, loomed up before
her. Straight up to her own room she sped, not stopping to
enter Sylvia's apartments, although the sound of laughing
voices penetrated to her.
Alone at the little flat-topped desk, she took out pen and
paper and began the letter-"Dear Maggie"- But that was
what she had done years ago,-written to Maggie to give up
Philip. That was in the unconscious selfishness of youth. Now
was she to write her again to give up Peter? Her courage oozed
away, left her helpless. She looked at the pen, put it carefully
away on the rack, slipped the sheet of paper back in the
pigeonhole. She might go down to Philadelphia to visit Alice
Talbert. Yes, she would do that very soon. And then maybe
she would see Maggie Ellersley-on the street, or even go and
call on her. Undoubtedly it was better to discuss such personal matters face to face.



I CHAPTER XXV


W HILE Joanna was sitting at her desk, Maggie
Ellersley some fifty blocks away brooded over plans
of her own. She had hoped, vainly as it turned
out, that her absence from Philadelphia would quicken Peter's
need of her. His very real regard for her hospitality and
kindness had long since been evident. She knew that he considered the little apartment on South Fifteenth Street his
nearest approach to a home in Philadelphia, and she had
hoped that the loneliness caused by her departure would induce
him to urge her to come back. But Peter's letters had not
been in the least melancholy. Once a week he had written to
her regularly during the four weeks of her stay in New York,
but though he had been kind and pleasant, not once had he
expressed a desire to see her, or even a passing curiosity as to
the date of her return.
When she had first come back to New York, she had had a
feeling of shame and despondency as she thought of her effort
in Philadelphia to induce Peter to take a definite stand about
their wedding. But her stay here with her mother had dissipated all that feeling. The prosy, uninteresting life which
Mrs. Ellersley and Mis' Sparrow led, the troop of commonplace, albeit kindly and dependable roomers made her turn
again to Peter for a way out. More than ever she was in the
same trap in which she had found herself years ago when as
a little girl she walked home with her mother from the dinners
which she had eaten in some employer's house. Now, it was
true, her surroundings were no longer dirty and she was no
203



204


THERE IS CONFUSION


longer poor-she and her mother had all the money they
needed and almost all that they wanted. Of lowly stock,
Maggie had never cared in the least for the possession of
riches. But the old loneliness the old sense of unworthiness,
of being nobody was strong upon her.
In earlier days she had frequented the Marshalls' house;
plenty of other girls had frequented it, too. It was to be presumed that the Marshalls from time to time had returned such
visits. But somehow she had never contrived to be on really
intimate terms with those others. They were all polite, more
than polite, even cordial to Maggie, and yet she knew that
while moving with that group, she was not of it.
The difficulty had been, had always been, that she had no
background..
Other girls' fathers and mothers were "somebodies." Alice
and Vera Manning's father was a remarkably successful business man, old Joel Marshall was as famous in his way, she
guessed, as Delmonico. Even Peter Bye-as poor almost, she
correctly imagined, as she herself in the old days-boasted a
long, a bona fide ancestry. And, besides, he was a man.
From as far back as she could remember she had had one
passion, one desire unique in its singleness. And that had been
to "be" somebody. And long ago she had realized that the
only way out for her was marriage with a man of distinction.
The distinction might consist in a career, in family, in business,
-it made no difference to her. At first she thought she could
achieve her desire through Philip-and she had loved him, too.
She dwelt on this a moment. How wonderful such a marriage would have been! Loving him as she did she would have
let her desire for mere respectability sink into second place,
discounting the fact that she would have gained it anyhow by
such a union. But Joanna had interfered, and then she had
married Henderson Neal, a gambler, a gambler who had



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Maggie murmured that she didn't care to go out, she had
come home to rest.
"Well, stay in the house all you want, chile. Long's I
got Cousin Jinny Sparrow to go around with me I ain't carin'.
Reckon we've done our share of stayin' in the house in our
time, ain't we, Jinny?"
Mis' Sparrow thus addressed admitted she had: "An' I don't
propose to do it no more. Come on, Sallie, I c'n see Maggie's
got somethin' on her mind."
Maggie protested, but only faintly. She loved and was
deeply attached to the two thin wrinkled ladies, but they and
she had nothing in common. They lived a separate life from
hers entirely, a life which included much attention to churches,
strawberry festivals, lodge meetings, bits of gossip, funerals,
visits to ladies similarly faded and wizened, and a sort of
shrewd indiscriminate charity. Maggie used to envy them
their utter and complete absorption in these matters.
"I'm not the one who wants to be to herself, it's you who
want to get off and talk over your secrets." She shook a
playful finger. Long after they had gone, curled up on her
couch, she sat watching, as she used to watch in Philadelphia,
the gas-heater cast its ruddy glow on the high white ceiling.
The morning brought her a momentary shock of pleasure.
It was the day for Peter's letter. He had written: "I am coming to see you next week." Her spirits leaped at that. But
afterwards he explained; one of his classmates had warned
him to get his instruments as quickly as possible, there was
going to be a great demand for steel, so he was coming to
New York to see about the things he had ordered. "I'm in
deadly earnest this time, Maggie, and though I don't like my
professors any better than I did before, I'm making the most
of my return. There's only one thing that would keep me
from finishing and that would be war. It seems foolish for a
colored man to fight for America, but I believe I'd like to do it.



THERE IS CONFUSION


207


Only I want to pick up a commission somewhere. Not a
chance for a colored fellow at Plattsburg, but some of the
boys are whispering of a training camp for Negro officers at
Des Moines. This is still sub rosa, so don't mention it."
Her hopes rose, fell, rose again as she scanned the letter.
"He must make some definite plans about me, if he's thinking of war."
The next Thursday saw him striding along Fifty-third Street
in the direction of Maggie's house. His nervous glance at his
watch justified his fear of being late. That was because he
had stopped at his Aunt Susan's little apartment to talk over
his plans. She was just the same as ever-stout, sane, energetic,
ready to be fond of Peter. Before the afternoon was over she
was worshiping him inwardly. For her nephew, suddenly conscious of his debt to her and realizing as he climbed the stairs
to her rooms that here was his only real home, had taken her
at the door into his arms with a burst of genuinely filial affection. She had, as she put it, "scared up" something for him to
eat, and the two sitting at the little dinner table had entered
into a silent appreciation of kinship such as lonely Miss Susan
had wanted ever since her sister's death. Peter had told her
of his break with Joanna. "I can't talk much about that, Aunt
Susan-maybe some other time —"
Her kind hand on his steadied him.
"For a while I kept on playing ducks and drakes with my
life-that was really why Joanna chucked me, you know-but
all of a sudden I came to my senses, and now I've gone back
to studying and I'll be all right yet, Aunt Sue. You and I'll
have a nice little house somewhere. You'll see." He checked
himself: "Unless this war intervenes. Of course I'd have to
go into that. America makes me sick, you know, like I used
to make you I guess, but darn it all, she is my country. My
folks helped make her what she is even if they were slaves."
Aunt Susan beamed on him.      "Your great-grandfather



THERE IS CONFUSION2


211


he whispered. It had never crossed his mind that she cared
for him like this. Subconsciously he thought, "Suppose this
had been Joanna."
Before Maggie could speak again, someone knocked on the
door; one of Mrs. Ellersley's roomers stuck in a tousled head.
" 'Scuse me, Miss Maggie, I heard you-all talkin' in here,
en they ain't no one else in the house. Jest wanted to tell you
I'm runnin' down to the corner a minute en as I mislaid my
key I'm goin t' -leave the latch up, if you-all don't mind."
Maggie stared blankly. "Oh, certainly Mr. Simpson, certainly."
They heard Mr. Simpson shuffling down the stairs and knew
by the sound of the slamming door that he had gone out.
What they did not know was that a moment later a tall,
heavily built man, who had been lounging sidewise against the
wall of a neighboring house, came forward swiftly and ran up
the steps. He tried the door gently and finding to his surprise
that it yielded, walked in and closed it softly behind him. For
two weeks, unnoticed, fingering a door-key in his pocket, he
had kept watch on that house and its inmates, until he had
become acquainted with the hours of the coming and going of
each. He knew Maggie was at home in the afternoons; his
purpose was to wait for a time when all of them should be out
but her. One by one he had watched them emerge, Mrs.
Ellersley and Mis' Sparrow finally within fifteen minutes of
each other.
"Those old birds," he murmured to himself, "they're just
as likely as not to join up somewheres and go to one of their
protracted meetin's."
Gradually the house had emptied itself with the exception
of Maggie and this tousel-headed Mr. Simpson who usually
left later than this. He had not seen Bye come out, but
thought it likely the visitor had left in the quarter of an hour



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THERE IS CONFUSION


he had spent in the saloon around the corner where he had
swallowed an unaccustomed dram to fortify his intention.
In the hall he stood blinking a moment in the darkness, then
as the sound of voices penetrated to him from above he withdrew into the obscurity of the narrow oblong parlor. Evidently
the fellow had not gone yet. There was plenty of time, he
could wait.
Upstairs Maggie was pouring out to Peter her great obsession.
"I know I am amazing you, Peter, but I can't endure this
life, this utter separation from people who mean something.,
Take me away from it. I'll be eternally grateful to you."
"But, good God, Maggie, what can I do? I'm only a penniless student with my way to make. We'd be poor for years.
And, anyway, where do you get the idea that my name carries
with it any social asset?"
She murmured something about his long line of ancestors;
years ago in her presence his Aunt Susan had spoken to Mrs.
Marshall about it.
"You know how your name gave you the entrance into the
best families in Philadelphia."
He stared at her. Of all the crazy complexes, this was the
craziest. It was indecent, this situation, agony for both of
them. He tried to be firm, faltered, was lost.
"You know I think all this is idiotic, Maggie. If you think
marriage with me would help you because I know the names
of my great-grandparents-why, it's absurd, ridiculous. I had
a lot of foreparents-we all did-but they were nobodies most
of them, only slaves."
"That's what they all were."
"All who?"
"All the early settlers, weren't they, the white ones, too,
indentured servants, outcasts, outlaws, men driven for one



THERE IS CONFUSION


213


reason or other from their own countries? But certain ones
of them have always stood out, attained prominence."
Overcome by this interpretation of history, he could make
no suitable answer. He moved over to the little table, picked
up his hat.
"Obviously all this will have to be gone over again. If you
like I'll send my Aunt Susan to see you, she knows all sorts of
people both here and in Philadelphia. If you ask her no doubt
she'll manage to make it very pleasant for you. I really must
go, Maggie.  And of course-that is, if you insist on itremember that I shall always be at your service."
He held her hand a moment, passed out and ran sideways,
after the manner of men, down the wide staircase.
The front door closed after him.
Maggie walked back through the room. This was her
great interview. Peter had been here; to prove it there was
his box of instruments on the table-she ran out in the hall
again, perhaps she could catch him, for he could hardly have
turned the corner.
An iron hand shot out of the darkness of the landing, caught
her wrist in an agonizing vise. Then some one dragged her
back into the room and she looked up into the raging somber
eyes of Henderson Neal. She had not been frightened at first,
but the sight of that face with its snarling lips and its bloodshot eyes unnerved her. In an instinctive gesture of fear she
threw up her free hand which held the little case. It slipped
from her grasp and some of the knives fell on the floor.
Still holding her he stooped and picked one up.
Her self-control ebbed back to her. Somehow she had never
been seriously afraid of Neal. Her scorn had been too great
for that. One does not fear what one scorns.
She said to him evenly, "Henderson, let me go."
But he pulled her closer to him. "I'll never let you go
again. Either you'll come with me, or I'll-"



THERE IS CONFUSION                  215
Slowly she sank, turned her eyes toward him, saw him drop
the knife and rush headlong out of the room.
So she was going to die, killed in a brawl with her divorced
husband. The fires of -her life were to go out, extinguished
under the waters of commonness and degradation. After all,
what did it matter? Her thoughts took an odd turn as she
felt herself slipping, slipping into the blackness of what must
be death.
"He must have loved me even more than I loved Philip.
What a pity that I have to die without letting Philip know
how dearly I loved him."



CHAPTER XXVI


A FEW moments later Mr. Simpson came rushing up the
front steps. He tried the door gingerly and found to
his relief that it was not locked. That meant Mrs.
Ellersley had not yet returned to chide him for his carelessness. Miss Maggie now was different; she would never carry
on, no matter what a fellow did. It would be just as well for
him to stop at the room at the head of the stairs and let her
know he had returned.
The landing was still dark, but long experience had taught
him to navigate the troublesome chair. Without mishap he
reached the door of the sitting-room. Everything was absolutely silent, still he would just put his head inside to make sure.
He was concluding there was nobody there when his eye
caught something protruding from the other side of the table
which stood in the center of the room. A chair, too, had been
overturned, and scattered about on the floor were several
little bright shiny things. He picked one up, looked at the
legend on the handle, "Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye."
The name of the maker evidently. Queer doings here. Half
afraid, wholly curious, he ventured in further, especially intrigued by that light brown object which protruded from
beyond the table and which looked-though this, he knew, was
imagination-like a hand. He bent over it, touched it, followed it with eyes and fingers to an arm dripping and scarlet
with blood and beyond the arm a face golden and immobile.
Beyond the head lay still another of those small strange objects.
2:I6



THERE IS CONFUSIONJ


217


Only this was neither bright nor shining; it was red, a vivid
red and the handle which he touched with a shaking finger
was sticky.
He sprang backwards, his face ghostly under its brown
skin, his eyes goggling. This was-Death. "Oh, God! Help!
Murder! Police! Miss Maggie!" Down the stairs he tore,
his hands twisted and fumbled at the locks. The door opened
to disclose Joanna standing on the door-step about to ring the
bell.
She looked past him into the dim hall. "Do you know if
Miss Ellersley is in?"
His eyes widened in horror. "For Christ's sake, lady, keep
out. Don't go in there, she's dead, pore girl, murdered."
"Nonsense! Maggie murdered! What do you mean?"
Stammering and shrinking he told her of his ghastly find.
"Don't go in there, lady, don't know nothin' about it. I
don't mean to."
She caught his arm. "Here, come on, you must take me to
it-to her; she can't be left like this. Be a man." But for
all her brave words her knees were shaking.
Unwillingly he led her to the quiet form in the green and
red-soaked dress. Joanna dropping beside it put her hand
on Maggie's wrist. A faint pulse fluttered.
"She's alive. I must get this dress off her arm and shoulder.
Got a knife?"
"Ain't they a million of 'em layin' around you, lady?"
Shudderingly she turned from the red one. "How queer!
How awful! Hand me that clean one over there." Her eye
fell, as she took it from him, on the handle-"Chilled steel,
England, Peter Bye"-rested there stricken.
"Ought to be able to trace the murderer awful quick, don't
you think, ma'am? This man Bye would know who he sold
them knives to."



218


THERE IS CONFUSION


Without answering she cut away the cloth, used her handkerchief-worthless for this-to stanch the blood. "Find me
a towel, there must be one somewhere." If Peter had done
this she must save Maggie in order to save him. And if this
were Peter's work-he did not love Maggie.
Ashamed of her thought she bent closer. "There's a bad
cut below the shoulder but the cut in the arm is worse. Have
you a large soft handkerchief? Quick, I must stop the bleeding. I can't manage with this stiff towel." He was off and
back in a jiffy with three handkerchiefs, immense and happily
clean, the testimony of Mrs. Ellersley's supervision.
She twisted one of them. "Now a pencil?" Somewhere out
of the past floated a memory of Miss Shanley's direction how
to make a tourniquet, one of the things Joanna had meant
to forget after she grew up. Subconscious memories guided
her fingers. "Now where's a bedroom-? Help me to carry
her there."
She had already dispatched him to a telephone to get, if
possible, Harry Portor, whose office was in the San Juan district. Puzzled by Mr. Simpson's incoherence, the doctor
promised to come at once and soon the chug-chug of his little
Ford rose above the sounds of the noisy street.
Joanna ran down to let him in, meeting his astonishment as
the two climbed the stairs with breathless information. Harry
praised her tourniquet. "Good work, Joanna. Fortunately
it's a clean cut, no jaggedness. I suppose he was trying to
get at her heart. Where's the knife it was done with?" He
busied himself with fresh bandages and restoratives.
"I don't know," she told him faintly. Why had she not,
thought of this? Now she must keep him out of the sittingroom. Her confusion escaped him, but Mr. Simpson hovering
in the background had heard the question and slipping out
returned with the knife.



THERE IS CONFUSION


219


"Here it is, doc. I was just tellin' the lady, ought sure to fbe
able to catch that 'sassin; man who sold him the knife's done
got his name stamped on the handle."
Harry took it. "H'm, a surgeon's knife." He turned it
over. "Where's the name?   Peter-why look here, Joanna,
did you see this?"
"There's a whole case in the other room, sir."
"Yes, go get it and bring it to me. What do you suppose
this means, Joanna?"
She whispered, "Wait till that man goes."
"All right, I'll send him off." He sent the willing Simpson
on his return with the case, to the druggist.
"Now, Joanna?"
She had her story ready. "I came to see Maggie aboutabout Peter, Harry. One of the girls who works at Madame
Harkness, saw Sylvia last night and told her Maggie was in
town." This much was true. "So I came to see her. Just before I came, it seems, Peter came. She told me about it. I
couldn't stand it.' And I caught up one of his little knives —
he'd left his case here-and cut her. I must have been crazy."
"You must still be crazy to think I'd believe that. You're
not a good liar, Joanna. Now tell me the truth, dear. Were
you here when he stabbed her?"
She stuck to her story. "He didn't stab her."
The quiet figure on the bed moved ever so slightly, opened
its lips, moaned faintly. "What's the matter with my arm?"
Harry leaned over her. "A bad cut, Maggie! How'd you
come to get it?" Her attention wandered. "Who's that standing over there?" Joanna retreated further into the shadows.
"Who are you? Oh, it hurts me here, too." She laid her hand
on her breast.
"I'm the doctor, Harry Portor, you remember me, don't
you?"



220


THERE IS CONFUSION


He could see her make an effort. "You're sure Henderson's
not here? It would make him angry to see you. Peter was
here a little while ago-we're going to be married, you know.
That's why Henderson cut me." Her voice grew stronger. "I
thought he had killed me."
Harry cast Joanna a fleeting look. "Wait down in my
car," his lips formed. She slipped down the stairs out of the
house.
She sat in the car a long time while the street darkened.
She saw Mr. Simpson return and hard on his footsteps Mrs.
Ellersley. He must have told the news just inside the hall, for
Joanna heard a shriek cut short by the closing door. Presently
Harry came running down the steps, peering shortsightedly
through his thick glasses at her crouching figure.
He said briefly, "A bad business, but she's not in any danger
unless there's a breakdown from nervous shock."
The words were meaningless to her, reviewing Maggie's
statement: "Peter was here, we're going to be married, you
know."
When they got to her house Joanna politely asked him to
come in.
"No, but wait a moment. I want to tell you something."
He fiddled with the brake a moment. "Joanna, you've been
avoiding me lately because you know I love you and you were
afraid I'd ask you to marry me. Don't avoid me any more.
I've got my answer. When a girl loves a man as you do
Peter Bye, so much so that she'll accuse herself for his sakeoh, it makes no difference that he was innocent-well, nobody
else need think there's a chance for him. But I'm your friend,
Joanna, believe that."
She thanked him sadly. "Good-night, Harry."
Sylvia sent Roger up to her room to tell her that Miss Vera
-Vera-"I forget her other name, Aunt Janna," had called up.
She would call again the next day.



THERE IS CONFUSION                 221
Joanna thanked him indifferently. "All right, darling, tell
Mamma I'll look out for her."
She thought to herself as he pattered down stairs: "Peter
and Maggie, here in New York... I won't think of them,
I'm not going through all that sick agony again. I believe I'll
go South to-morrow."



CHAPTER XXVII
TIHE day's excitement made Joanna sleep soundly, and
in the morning she awoke strongly refreshed and
rested. No gesture that she could make to Fate would
ever restore Peter. She had been willing to make the greatest
sacrifice of all-to surrender her pride-and even as she was
about to do this, absolute evidence was given that her sacrifice
was useless. The whole affair was over, finished, dead; henceforth Peter was to be in her life what other men were to other
girls when they spoke of them as "old beaux." That was the
way for her to speak of Peter now. She practiced it with stiff
lips: "Peter Bye, oh, yes, he used to be an old beau of mine."
Her romance would hereafter lie behind her. From this
day on she would dedicate herself to one interest, which should
be the fixed purpose of her life; now that she thought of it
she would give up the idea of dancing, too. Her former lover
and her former ambition alike were unattainable; they had
merely been means of enriching her experience. Now she
would get down to the business of living; no more sighs, no
more backward glances. And the first thing she would do
would be to offer her services as a director of music to a colored
school in the South. Many a principal before whose school
she had sung would extend her a cordial welcome. Even
though the school year was almost near its close she might
get a chance to map out arrangements for the work of the
following year. Her preference would be one of the -less-known,
poorly endowed schools where there would be lots of work.
222



224


THERE IS CONFUSION


How quickly once she would have rejoined with one of her
sweeping platitudes which to her were not platitudes because
they represented a fresh and virile belief: "Don't let her
become discouraged, Essie; just have her keep on. Success
always comes if you work hard enough for it." But to-day,
remembering her plans for the stage and her courtship with
Peter-both rendered frustrate through this hopeless obstacle
of color-she could only murmur: "Yes, yes, I know. White
people are hard to get along with. Better times coming, I
hope, Essie."
After a bath she slipped into a flame-colored dressing gown
and sat down to her letters. Sylvia coming up noiselessly put
her head in the door.
"Not dressed yet, Joanna? She'll be here soon. It's 10:30."
Joanna lifted a startled face. "Who'll be here?"
"Miss Sharples, Miss Vera Sharples. I sent Roger up to
tell you."
"Yes, he did, but you know how he forgets names. He said
'Miss Vera' and I thought he meant Vera Manning. Wonder
what Miss Sharples wants to see me about?"
"One of her pet charities probably. Get a move on. Here,
wear your green dress." Joanna, whose thoughts had flown to
Peter via Miss Susan Graves via Miss Sharples, took the green
dress absent-mindedly, then dropped it with a shudder. Maggie
had worn such a dress yesterday a soft dull green, horribly,
fantastically adorned with bright and sticky red.
"No, not that."
"You are nervous, Joanna. What do you feel like wearing?"
Together they chose a crepe silk dress of straight and
simple lines. The bodice as flaming as the dressing gown
was long, like a Russian blouse. Its end terminated by hemstitching into a black shallow-plaited skirt. A narrow ropelike cord confined the waist.



226


THERE IS CONFUSION


ever, she took the extended hand and gave it a hearty pressure.
"Yes," said Miss Sharples as though checking up the colored
girl's points by a pattern which she carried in her head, "yes,
you are the one. I was sure I hadn't confused you with anyone else. I haven't seen you for several years, you know, not
since that Christmas when you danced for the Day Nursery
with Helena Arnold. Do you remember?"
Joanna, slightly nonplussed, nodded yes. As though she
could forget that Christmas when she had become engaged to
Peter!
Miss Sharples, still pursuing some train of thought known
only to herself, meandered on. "I said, 'I know there must be
somebody who could do it,' and then I thought of you, but I
didn't know your name. So I called up Helena and she told
me. Do you still dance as divinely as you did that night, my
dear?"
"Better," Joanna told her confidently, "although it doesn't
get me anywhere. Would you mind telling me what all this
is about?"
Her visitor settled herself comfortably in a chair, crossed
one leg over the other, and took out a cigarette. "Mind if I
smoke?" Joanna watched her wide-eyed, picturing her father's
surprise if he should happen to look in on them.
"It's a long story. You may or may not know that I am
one of the directors of the District Line Theater. Lately
we've been putting on a production called 'The Dance of the
Nations'-dances of the natiops it really should be called. Well,
we have one woman to represent France, another England, etc.;
we aren't featuring Germany or any of her allies. When it
came to America we had to have two or three dances represented, one for the white element, one for the black and one for
the red. Of course that made the woman representing America
practically a star. Well, she's all right as a white American,



THERE IS CONFUSION


227


or as a red one, but when it comes to the colored American,
she simply lays down on her job." Miss Sharples' eloquence
drowned her sense of grammar.
"You know," she went on vigorously, "art to my eye is art,
and there's no sense in letting a foolish prejudice interfere
with it. This girl won't darken her face and hasn't a notion,
so far as dancing like colored people is concerned, beyond
the cake-walk. Well, I told my Board I didn't believe that
was either adequate or accurate. I'd seen Helena Arnold
dance, you know, and I'd seen you, and I figured that your
way was the right way," she concluded sensibly, "because you
were colored. Miss Ashby's contract expires this week and I
persuaded the Board to let me try to find someone else. What
do you think about it?" She paused, still regarding Joanna
shrewdly.
"You mean," said Joel Marshall's daughter, "that you are
offering me a chance to dance at the District Line Theater?"
She thought: "I know this isn't real."
"Well, yes, if you suit. It would be an experiment. To be
frank, my dear, some of the directors are doubtful about the
success of a colored girl on the stage, but if you dance as well
as you did five or six years ago, I should say there would be
no difficulty. Suppose you come with me now, there's a rehearsal at the theater this afternoon. Are you free?"
Was she free? She dashed off to get her wraps and stumbled
into Sylvia on the second floor. "Isn't she long-winded?
What'd she come to see you about?"
Joanna took her by both shoulders and shook her. "About
my dancing at the District Line Theater in the 'Dance of the
Nations.' Oh, Sylvia, if I'm dreaming, don't let me wake up."
Down in Greenwich Village on the south side of Washington
Square, Joanna found Miss Susan's "Board." They were
occupying, scattered around, a large dilapidated room of mag



228


THERE IS CONFUSION


nificent proportions and they were talking of art, of dancing
with an enthusiasm and accuracy, an amazing precision such
as Joanna had never heard equaled.
"Valvinov is good, more than good, excellent in her conception of the dance and the way she carries it out, but her
ankles are too clumsy, it makes me sick to look at her legs."
A short, stocky young man seated at the piano delivered this
dictum. He was very pale, with thick black hair which he wore
plastered back from a low square forehead. His hair was
long, Joanna noticed,. and ran in unbroken strands from his
forehead to the top of his coat collar. He spoke absolutely
unaccented English, and his clothes were sharply American,
but he was unlike any American the girl had even seen before.
Miss Sharples introduced her briskly. "This is Miss
Marshall," she said to the room in general, "the dancer I was
telling you of." Joanna inclined her head slightly, but the
men all rose and bowed gravely, and the two other women in
the room-a Miss Rosen and a Miss Phelps as they turned
out to be-bowed also noncommittally but without hostility.
Evidently the place had frequently been used for rehearsals,
for there was a narrow platform running across the far end
of the room. Here Miss Sharples stationed Joanna. "Just
to give them an idea of what you can do, my dear. There isn't
much space, but I don't think that will bother you."
"No," said Joanna confidently, "the thing is the music."
She glanced at the pale young man who had spoken about theRussian dancer's thick ankles. "Can you play by ear?"
"I think I could manage it," he told her seriously. They
were all serious, as unconscious of self and as tremendously
interested as though they were assisting at an affair of national
moment. Joanna felt the atmosphere enveloping, quickening
her. She stepped down from the platform.
"Well, now listen. I'm supposed to have a ring of children



THE RE IS CONFUSION


229


around me. I sing and they answer. At first I'll have to sing
both parts, but afterwards you can play their answers. See,
this is the way it goes." She sat down at the piano, and ran
through the melody of "Barn! Barn!" singing it in her beautiful, full voice.
"That's it, that's got the lilt," a tall, dark man said to Miss
Rosen.
Joanna yielded the piano to the pale young man-Franciseveryone called him. He ran over her sketch, filling in with
deep, rich chords, while she flew back to the little platform.
"Now then, you've got it. Ready!
"Sissy in the barnI Join in the weddin'!"
Her voice rang out, her slender flaming body turned and
twinkled, her lovely graceful limbs flashed and darted and
pirouetted. She was everywhere at once, acting the part of
leader, of individual children,' of the whole, singing, stamping
circle.
The Board applauded. "Oh, but that's great, that's genius,"
cried Miss Phelps.
"If I could only have some real children," Joanna suggested, "colored children. Are there any around here?"
"About five thousand down there in Minetta Lane," Francis
told her gravely. "Want me to get you some?"
"Oh, if you only would." He and Miss Rosen disappeared
and were back in fifteen minutes with ten colored children, of
every type and shade, black and brown and yellow, some with
stiff pigtails and others with bobbed curling locks. Most of
them knew the game already, all of them took to Joanna and
threw themselves with radiant, eager good nature into the
spirit of what she was trying to display.
The tall dark man, Mr. Hale, came over to her. "You're



234


THERE IS CONFUSION


Miss Sharples put her up for membership in a club whose
members were mostly people that "did" something.   And
Joanna fell in the habit of taking her lunch and frequently her
dinner, too, at this club, just to lose herself in the atmosphere
which she found there.
Undoubtedly the contact did her good. Joanna, while lacking Peter's singularly active dislike for white people, was not
on the other hand a "good mixer." Following the natural reaction at this time of her racial group, she had tended to seek
all her ideals among colored people and where these were lacking to create them for herself. As a result of this attitude,
injurious in the long run to both whites and-blacks, she was
hardening into a singularly narrow, even though self-reliant
egocentric. She had never met in her family with much opposition to her chosen career, but then neither with the exception
of Joel's and that of her teachers had she met with much
cooperation.
Now to her astonishment she found herself in a setting
where people, without being considered "different," "highbrow," "affected,"-and not greatly caring if they weretalked, breathed, lived for and submerged themselves and'
others, too, in their calling. She met girls not as old as she,
who had already "arrived" in their chosen profession; incredibly young editors, artists-exponents of new and inexplicable
schools of drawing,-women with causes,-birth-control, single
tax, psychiatry,- teachers of dancing, radical high school
teachers.
There were men to be met, too, really eminent men, but
Joanna was not much interested. Following the American
idea, she had been too carefully trained to care for the company of white men. Between them and herself the barrier was
too impassable. Besides, it was women who had the real
difficulties to overcome, disabilities of sex and of tradition.
For a while she was puzzled, a little ashamed when she



THERE IS CONFUSION


235


realized that so many of these women had outstripped her so
early; some of them were poor, some had responsibilities.
There were not many of these last. It was a long time before
the solution occurred to her and when it did the result was
her first real rebellion against the stupidity of prejudice.
These women had hot been compelled- to endure her long,
heartrending struggle against color. Those who had had
means had been able to plunge immediately into the sea of
preparation; they had had their choice of teachers; as soon
as they were equipped they had been able to approach the
guardians of literary and artistic portals. Joanna thought of
her many futile efforts with Bertully and sighed at the pityof
it all. Sometimes she felt like a battle-scarred veteran among
all these succe'ssful, happy, chattering people, who, no matter
how seriously, how deeply they took their success, yet never
regarded it with the same degree of wonder, almost of awe
with which she regarded hers.
She realized for the first time how completely colored
Americans were mere on-lookers at the possibilities of life.
She spent a few happy months with these people; they made
pleasant and stimulating company for her; she herself suspected that she had made good "copy" for some of them.
They were for the most part unconscious of race, not at all
inclined to patronize, and generous with praise and suggestion.
One woman, it is true, told Joanna that she had always liked
colored people.
"My father would insist on having colored servants. He
preferred them."
Joanna had made an impish reply. "My father employs
both white and colored servants. But he prefers the colored
ones. However, it doesn't make any difference to me."
Still that had been a rare encounter. Life on the whole
smiled on her. Yet she was not happy. But is anybody so?
she wondered. She had forgotten to sorrow for her break with



236           THERE IS CONFUSION
Peter, her life was too full for that, even for a new love.
Vera Manning's brother Tom, brought into her entourage by
the flood of publicity and popularity that engulfed her, asked
her to marry him. She liked him; found him charming and
sympathetic, but he was too white and she did not want a
marriage which would keep the difficulties of color more than
ever before her eyes. What she did want, she decided, was to
be needed, to be useful, to be devoting her time, her concentration and her remarkable singlemindedness to some worthy
visible end. After all, she had worked hard and striven tremendously-to be what? A dancer.
"Is this really what you wanted me to be?" she asked her
father abruptly. They were driving home from the theater,
their nightly custom. "Is this your idea of real greatness?"
And Joel, his voice half glad, half sorry, told her that he, too,
had hoped for something different,



CHAPTER XXIX


AT first the war presented itself to Peter in a purely
personal aspect. It was a long time before he envisaged the struggle as a great stupendous whole.
Boyishly egotistic, he saw it simply as the next big moment
in the panorama of his life following on his break with Joanna and his puzzling relationship with Maggie. And always
he saw it in relation to the things which were happening to
him like a series of living pictures against a great impersonal
background.
Ignorant of Neal's attack on Maggie he had returned to
Philadelphia, completed his work and had gone to Des Moines.
He sent his books to his Aunt Susan,-all but one little black
testament which bore written on the fly leaf his father's and
grandfather's and his father's names. There was another
name, too, "Judy Bye." But Peter could not recall this.
"More ancestors," he said to himself, thinking ruefully of
Maggie. He could not bear to think of their last talk: even
the thought of his forgotten instruments could not induce
him to write to her.
In Des Moines he had met Philip. And from that meeting
resulted that first indelible picture. He had rushed forward to
Philip, his hand outstretched.
"Marshall! Say, fellow, this is really great!"
He could hear his voice ringing even now. And then Philip's
contemptuous rejoinder: "I don't shake hands with any such
damned light of love."
He thought he must have misunderstood at first. But
237



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THERE IS CONFUSION


Alexander groaned, "Bye, for God's sake don't leave me.
I'm as weak as a cat."
"Oh, you'll be all right," Peter called back, and left him
with the white lieutenant standing silently by.
Shortly after his return Harley, declaring himself much
better, went below to his room. But first he thanked the
lieutenant who bowed with his pleasantly grave air. Peter,
about to sink into the vacant seat, looked up and caught the
intent glance of the white officer who smiled and nodded and
came leisurely toward him.
"May I sit beside you a moment?" he asked pleasantly.
"Yes," Peter replied shortly. He thought: "I know what
you make me think of. Of myself that first day I put on my
uniform. Now why?" It was true that while there was no
facial resemblance, the two men were built almost exactly
alike, tall, with broad shoulders, flat backs and lean thighs.
Peter was at first glance the more comely, his head was more
shapely and his hair so crisply curling gave him a certain
persistent boyishness. The other man, a little older and
plainer, had nevertheless a certain whimsical melancholy about
his eyes and mouth which attracted Peter.
"I heard your friend call you Bye," he said still pleasantly.
Peter nodded briefly. "That's my name, too. Bye, Meriwether Bye. I was wondering where you came from."
Meriwether Bye! Peter felt his face growing hot as he remembered the circumstances in which he had last heard that
name. "Dr. Meriwether Bye of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania,
I suppose."
Meriwether without surprise acknowledged this. "You know
of me then. May I ask how?"
"I've always known of you indirectly," Peter told him
coldly. "My great-grandfather spent all his life working for
yours-for nothing. There was a black Meriwether Bye, my



THERE IS CONFUSION


241


father, named after him, though I'm sure," he added with
rude inconsequence, "I can't imagine why."
Meriwether looked at him with a sort of gentle understanding. "I've often wondered about those black Byes," he said
musingly. "My grandfather, Dr. Meriwether Bye-he's an old,
old man now-used to tell me about them. He was very fond
of one of them, Isaiah Bye. Isn't it strange that we, the
grandsons of those two men, friends way back in those days,
should be meeting here on our way to France to fight for our
country?"
Something, some aching tiger of resentment and dislike,
which always crouched in Peter ready to spring at the approach of a white man, lay down momentarily appeased.
"Friends! Say, that's the first time I ever heard a white
man speak that way of the relation between a slave-owner
and his slave. You can't guess,'" he said abruptly, "how I
first heard of you." And he told Meriwether of his experience with Mrs. Lea, while the doctor watched him with keen,
melancholy eyes.
"I'll wager you were angry, mad clear through and through.
You had a right to be. Mrs. Lea," as he pronounced her name
his gentle voice grew a little gentler, Peter thought, "didn't
realize what she was saying. She's like many another of us,
totally unaware of our shame and your merits. I hope this
war will teach us something."
He had a nice way with him. "A regular fellow," Peter
thought, listening to his quiet, unaffected disquisition on many
subjects. He had been literally everywhere, even to Greenland, and had seen all sorts of people. He had a theory that
while not all individuals were equal, all races averaged the
same. Some men were bound to be superior.
"And the differences between the races are a matter of
relativity," he finished. "I confess my own interest in colored
people is very keen." He raised a fine hand to disparage



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Peter's slight movement. "Yes, I know you are sick of that
and the patronage it implies. But I mean it, Bye, and when
you get back home you must go out to Bryn Mawr and see
whether or not I have tried to express that interest."
"I should think," Peter looked at him squarely, "all things
considered, you or your family would have shown some interest in us black Byes. You are rich men, your family is a
powerful one."
"Was a powerful one," Meriwether interrupted him. He
had flushed a little. "I suppose you know that my greatgrandfather, Aaron Bye, had ten sons. But only four of them
had sons and all of them except my father died in the Civil
War. Isn't that some compensation? My own father died
when I was very young and I grew up with his father. He
was the one who told me about the black Byes and how he
when a boy used to play about Philadelphia with Isaiah.
'Proud as Isaiah Bye,' I've heard him say. Bye," said Meriwether earnestly, "I tried my best when I became a man to
find if there were any of you left in Philadelphia. It seemed
to me a monstrous thing to have our family and our fortunefor my grandfather is still a very rich man-reared on the
backs of those other Byes." He struck the table with a vehement hand. "That whole system was barbarous."
"I wish," Peter told him, "I had known you sooner." Just
to hear this expression of penitence seemed to ease the long
resentment of the years.
"Without those slaves," Meriwether resumed, "Aaron Bye
would never have got on his feet. His father was just a poor
farmer, a Quaker, running away from England to escape religious persecution. He came over and received a grant of
land. But he could have done nothing without labor, and
free labor at that. He and a friend bought a wretched slave
between them, worked a bit of land, then that old Bye bought
out the other man's share of the slave; presently he bought



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so closely. I used to wonder and speculate about you. Something in you made me think of myself. It was as though
you, all unrelated even racially, represented something which
might have been a part of myself, as though you," he said
dreamily, "were living actively what I was thinking of passively. I have often tried to picture my life as a colored
man. I think if there had been any of that selfish admixture
of blood between the white and black Byes and I had heard
of it, I'd have gone the United States over but what I'd have
found my relatives, and have claimed them, too, before all the
world."
One of Meriwether's strange fantasies was that he would
never return from the war. "I knew it when I came away
from America. And listen, Bye, when I die," Peter marveled
at the sureness of that "when," "I want you after you get
back home to go to my grandfather and tell him who you
are and how you met me. You are to give him this." He
took a little case from his pocket in which were the pictures
of a man and woman,-old-fashioned pictures.
"Your father," Peter exclaimed involuntarily, "you can see
he's a Bye    "
"And my mother," Meriwether finished. He drew a locket
suspended on a thin gold chain from around his neck. "And
take this to Mrs. Lea. She loves me," he said very simply.
"Here, you might just as well take them now." Peter accepted them reluctantly.
He wished he had a picture of Joanna. Death seemed
suddenly very near, very possible. He did not care if he
died, but he would like Joanna to know that he thought of
her. But he had nothing to leave for her. Yes, there was the
Testament. He took it from his inside breast-pocket and
showed it to Meriwether. Indeed he looked at it closely for
the first time himself. The two heads so like yet so different
bent over the old faded script. On the top of the page in a



THERE IS CONFUSION


249


mediately after his company had left Brest. The awful condition of things in the seaport town was general rather than
specific, and for the first time since Peter had entered the
war he was feeling comparatively calm. His long and intimate talks with Meriwether had produced their effect. He
had not realized that any such man as the young Quaker
physician had existed in the white world. He had too much
sense and too many cruel experiences to believe that there
were many of Meriwether's kind to be found in a lifetime's
journey, but somehow his long bitterness of the years had been
assuaged. Henceforth, he told himself, he would try to be
more generous in his thoughts of white men-perhaps his attitude invited trouble which he was usually only too willing
to meet halfway.
At Lathus, Harley Alexander met him in the little place.
"Seems to me you're got up regardless," Peter had commented.
Alexander, one of the trimmest men in the regiment, was looking unusually shipshape, almost dapper.
The other struck him familiarly across the shoulder. "And
that ain't all. Say, fellow, there's a band concert to-night,
right here in this little old square. I'm goin' and I'm goin;
to take a lady."
"Lady!  Where'd you get her?"
"Right here. These girls are all right. Not afraid of a cdrk
skin. 'How should we have fear, m'soo,' one of them says
to me, 'when you fight for our patrie and when you are so
beau?  'Beau' that's handsome, ain't it?  Say this is some
country to fight for; got some sense of appreciation. Better
come along, old scout. There's a pile of loots getting ready
to come, each with a French dame in tow."
"I'll be there," Peter told him, laughing. "But count me
out with the ladies. I can't get along with the domestic brand
and I know I'll be out of luck with the foreign ones."
Some passing thought wiped the joy of anticipation from



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THERE IS CONFUSION


250   -~~   THER      ISCNFSO
Harley's face. "My experience is that these foreign ones are
a damn sight less foolish than some domestic ones I've met.
Well, me for the concert."
But that band concert never came off. At sunset a company of white American Southerners marched into Lathus
down the main street, past the little place. There was a sudden uproar.
"Look!   Darkies and white women!   Come on, fellows,
kill the damned niggers!"
There was a hasty onslaught in which the colored soldiers
even taken by surprise gave as good as they took. Between
these two groups from the same soil there was grimmer, more
determined fighting than was seen at Verdun. The French
civil population stood on the church-steps opposite the square
and watched with amazement.
"Nom de dieu! Are they crazy, then, these Americans, that
they kill each other!"
The next day saw Peter's company on its way to La Courtine, a training center, where there were no women. Thence
they moved presently to the front in the Metz Sector.
The injustice and indignity rendered the colored troups at
Lathus, plus the momentary glimpses which he caught of
Meriwether and his exaltation, plunged Peter into a morass
of melancholy and bitter self-communing which shut him off
as effectually as a smoke-screen from any real appreciation of
the dangers which surrounded him on the front.
In the midst of all that ineffable danger, that hellish noise,
he was harassed by the inextricable confusion, the untidiness
of his own life. God, to get rid of it all! Once he spent
forty-eight hours with nine other men on the ridge of a hill
under fire. The other fellows told stories and swapped confidences. But he stayed unmoved through it all, impervious
alike to the danger and the good man-talk going on about
him.



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on his coat. More cautiously, then, he reached out again,
searching for the face, yes, that was Meriwether's nose. Those
canny finger-tips of his recognized the facial structure. His
hand came back to Meriwether's chest. The heart was beating faintly and just above it was a hole, with the blood gushing, spurting, hot and thick.
He sat upright and wrenching open his tunic tore at his
shirt. The stuff was hard to tear but it finally gave way under
the onslaught of teeth and fingers. Faint with the pain of
his left arm and 'the loss of his own blood, he set his lips
hard, concentrating with all his strength on the determination
not to lose consciousness again. Finally grunting, swearing,
almost crying, he got Meriwether's head against his knee, then
against his shoulder, and staunched the wound with the harsh,
unyielding khaki. His canteen was full and he drenched the
chilly, helpless face with its contents. All this time he was
sitting with no support for his back and the strain was telling
on him.
Against the surrounding gray of the coming morning, southward toward his own lines, he caught sight of darker shapes,
trees perhaps, perhaps men-if he could only get to them!
Placing Meriwether's face upwards he caught him about his
lean waist, buckling him to his side with an arm of steel,
and rising to his knees he crawled for what seemed a mile
toward that persistent blackness. Twice he fell, once he struck
his left arm against a dead man's boot. The awful throbbing
in his shoulder increased. But at last he was there, at last in
the shelter of a clump of low, stunted trees. With a sob he
braced himself against them, letting Meriwether's head and
shoulders rest against his knees. The blood had begun to
spurt again and Meriwether stirred. Peter whispered:
"Bye, for God's sake, speak to me. This is Peter, Peter
Bye, you remember?"



CHAPTER XXXI


C HAMBERY, the capital of Savoy, a town situated
toward the south of the extreme east of France, has
not always been as well known to America as its more
important neighbors, Grenoble and Lyons. Up to a few years
ago it was celebrated chiefly because it was the location of
the chateau of the old dukes of Savoy and the birthplace of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Now it is known to thousands and
thousands of Americans because during the great War it
was metamorphosed into a rest center for colored soldiers.
To the tourist's mind it might stand out for three reasons:
as a city in which it is well nigh impossible to get a lost telegram repeated; as a place where one may procure at very little
expense the most excellent of manicures and the most delicious
of little cakes. And, thirdly, as the scene of a novel by Henri
Bordeaux, "La Peur de Vivre," the story of a young girl who,
afraid to face the perils of life, forfeited therefore its pleasures.
Certainly Alice Du Laurens, the young woman of Bordeaux'
novel, would have been no more astonished to find herself in
New York than Maggie Ellersley, whom she so closely resembled in character, was to find herself in Chambery. The
nervous shock which Harry Portor had predicted from her
encounter with Neal followed only too surely, but for another
reason. The flesh wound itself had been negligible and she
might have recovered without the nervous breakdown, had not
Mr. Simpson in an agony of remorse at the danger to which
he had so unwittingly exposed her, subjected her again with
254



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others. Now that she had no strength, now that life stretched
around her a dreary procession of sullen, useless days, she
realized the beauty inherent in life itself, the miracle of health
and sane nerves, of the ability to make a living, of being helpful
to others.
"Why, Henderson, even Henderson-if I could have
taken him back that first time, I might have changed him,
got him to work at something profitable and interesting.
Maybe," she thought, for the first time since her marriage,
"we might have had a child. And what difference did it make
if I didn't go with those-'dickties?' I could have had a nice
time; I used to have nice times, lovely cosy times with Anna
and Tom."
That brought her to the thought of Peter. "Of course, he
didn't want me. And I never loved him. He always did and
always will love Joanna. Whether he gets her or not, she's
the woman for him. He needs her as I need Philip." She
lay quite still then, concentrating, probing her inmost spirit.
"As I need no one," she said to herself aloud. "If I ever
get well again I shall be what I want to be without depending
on anybody. And I shall always be content."
Who shall explain the relation between mind and spirit?
She grew better after that, began to sit up and, joining one of
her mother's myriad committees, engaged in the preparation
of outfits for the men overseas. Very slowly, almost reluctantly her interest in life came creeping back with her strength.
She grew to be like the little girl she had been long, long ago,
before her overpowering desire got possession of her. But she
needed the stimulus of an occupation which would take her
out of herself.
"If I could find something which would make me forget
everything that is past, Harry," she told the young doctor.
He had fallen into the habit of taking her on his rounds two



THERE IS CONFUSION


26f5


Then they met in front of the Statue des Elephants. Philip,
examining that marvel with meticulous care, asked her indirectly about Peter.
"How will you combine the sort of business you contemplate and your marriage? Seems to me you'll have to be away
from home a lot. Somehow, I don't picture you as a 'new
woman,' Maggie."
So he was interested! And she had done nothing, not
one little thing to lead up to it. "Oh, God, let me be happy
now," she breathed. "You know I meant to play the game
straight and I really do love Philip." Aloud she said joyously, "I'm not going to be married, Philip, at least not to
Peter Bye, if that's what you're talking about. That was all
a mistake. We both realized that."
She glanced at him, hoping to meet an answering joy in his
face, but found instead a deepening mournfulness.
"Philip," she said very gently. "What is it?"
He lifted a haggard face. "Listen, Maggie, I can speak now.
I loved you long, long ago, when we used to go off on those
catering jobs for father. Do you remember? But I didn't
know it, I didn't think about it, until you married. Somehow I had always thought there would be time enough and
that, anyway, matters would adjust themselves. And when
I heard you'd married that fellow, I was so amazed, thrown
off my feet. I said to myself, 'You poor weak fool, of course,
she'd prefer a man, a real man who, no matter what his character, would have gumption to go after the woman he loved.'
"I'd have come to you, but I thought you must love him;
I had heard the girls mention seeing the two of you together
and I concluded it was an affair of long standing. To ease
myself, to put you completely out of my mind, I plunged into
this public work; I wouldn't even mention your name. And
the first thing I knew you had left Neal and were engaged
to Bye. I couldn't understand that, Maggie, since you had



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THERE IS CONFUSION


grown up with Joanna and Peter, but that's all over now.
I cursed Bye out at Des Moines, I remember."
Maggie, reviewing all that had preceded Peter's departure
for Des Moines, shivered a little. "Perhaps some day I can
tell you all about it, Philip. It was mostly my fault."
"It doesn't make any difference whose fault it was, Maggie;
everything is too late now. You don't suppose I'm going
to ask you, a beautiful woman, just on the threshold of a
successful future, to marry me. My dear, I'm a wreck. I
may live a year and I may live a half century. But I'd always be good for nothing, sitting around, ailing, getting on
your nerves. I wouldn't be able even to run your cash register for you, Maggie. These gas cases are absolutely unpredictable."
"I don't care," she told him stubbornly. "You haven't
asked me but I'll tell you. I love you, Philip, I always have.
And nothing would please me more than to nurse you. Why,
I love you, my dear. Manage my cash register! We'll get
you home and Harry Portor will fix you up and then you'll
take up your magazine again. I'll be your secretary, vour
assistant, your whole force."
But Philip was adamant. "You don't know what you're
saying. No, Maggie, after I leave here I'll never see you
again. I had my chance to win you once and I let you go,
threw you into the arms of Neal. That was bad enough.
But I won't chain you to an invalid's chair for life."
For the first time since she had known him she recognized
in him a faint bitterness.
"You know, Maggie, I've never made any kick about being
colored. Rather, I looked at it as a life work ready and
cut out for a man, for me, and I rushed rather joyously into
it to do battle. Now as I look back, I think I realize for the
first time what this awful business of color in America does
to a man, what it has done for me. If we weren't so per



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on his wasted hand. "Ah, but, Maggie, it is too late. Everything is too late."
On the last day of his stay she came to him. "You love
me, Philip?" He gave a quick assent. "And you know I
love you and you still won't marry me?"
"Don't torture me, Maggie. You've no idea what it means
to be tied for life to a peevish invalid. I-I never expect to
see you again, my dear."
"Then," she said, and the last tatters of her old obsession,
that oldest desire of all for sheer decency-fell from her,
"then I'll be your mistress, Philip. For no matter where you
go I'll find you and stay with you, you'll never be able to
send me away from you. You'll make me the by-word of all
New York but I won't care, Philip, for I love you. Oh, Philip,
Philip- "
They were in the chapel of the old Dukes of Savoy and the
ancient caretaker, having stayed away the length of time which
Philip's pourboire warranted, came in, but went out again,
quietly, smiling.
For Philip had risen and drawn Maggie to him. "You
really mean it, Maggie, my Maggie! Oh, my little yellow
flower, I'll never let you go."
She looked at him starry-eyed. "You don't seem so weak,
Philip."
Outside, the cross on Nivrolet, a luminous symbol of faith,
pointed steadfastly to heaven.



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"Vera, you imp! Telling those people that you had gone
to school with me to learn democracy; I nearly died! Where've
you been this long while? How wonderful you look! And
how different!"
"Oh, Joanna, Joanna, I was coming to see you! First of all
I've been South. I got sick of going about -with those white
people, so I cast about for something to do. You remember
they mobbed some colored soldiers in Arkansas because they'd
worn their uniforms in the street? Well, it made me sick, it
made me think of-of Harley. So I rushed to a newspaper,
Barney Kirchner is the manager-wasn't he one of Philip's
friends? And I told them: 'I'm colored, see, but nobody would
guess it; send me down there. See if I can't get a line on
those people."'
"Mercy," said Joanna, "what an idea!"
"And they sent me. And, oh, Joanna, it was wonderful to
see how our folks, those colored people, trusted me and shielded
me when they found I was one of them. And those white
bullies, thinking I was one of them, told me the most bloodcurdling, most fiendish tales. I really got an investigation
started. Mr. Kirchner has taken it up. Oh, Joanna, I'm glad
I'm colored-there's something terrible, terrible about white
people."
She had seen a side of life which had first amazed, then
frightened, then incited her. Joanna had never seen her friend
like this, so roused and quickened, so purposeful. "It was as
though at last I had found some excuse for being what I am,
looking like one race and belonging to another. It made me
feel like-don't laugh-like a ministering angel. Oh, I hated
myself so for having spent all those foolish months, years
even, away from my own folks when I might have been consecrated to them, serving them, helping them, healing them.
You can't understand just how I feel, Janna dear. You've
always had a definite something before you to make out of



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THERE IS CONFUSION




"Forced to devote your life to it," Joanna repeated, be,
wildered. "Why, what do you mean?"
A subtle change came over Vera's face. It was almost as
though one could see her marshaling her inner forces, her
spiritual resources.  Despair, resolve, pride, courage-her
friend could descry each in turn. Then she laughed her old
confident laugh.
"Well, it's like this, Janna. I've had a message-indirectly
-from Harley. He-" she bit her lip, "he isn't coming back
to America. He managed to get his discharge in France and
he's made up his mind to live there. Isn't it great for him?
It means he'll have to start his training all over again, but he
says he'd rather do that than waste his life bucking this color
business any more. And there's all sorts of work for a dentist
in those little French towns. Just imagine old Harley's being
free to come and go as he pleases. No more insults for him,
no more lynching news. Why, it'll be life all over for him,
won't it, Jan? And I can't blame him," she broke off breathlessly, "once I might have thought the thing for him to do was
to stay with his own folks, but life cheats us colored people so.
I wish I had understood that earlier. White and colored people!
No wonder Peter used to rave as he did." She ended astoundingly: "I suppose you and he have made up."
"Who?" asked Joanna stupidly. "Peter and-and me?
Why, I haven't seen him. Why, he's going to marry Maggie
Ellersley!"
"Marry Maggie nothing! Here, here's an Automat. Well
be all right in here. Miss Maggie Ellersley is going to marry
your brother. Didn't you know it?"
"No, but I'm glad of it, glad of it. How'd you know all
this, Vera?"
"Peter told me, of course. I've seen him. He's the most
perfect darling in his uniform! You ought to hear him raving
about France, but silent as the tomb about the War. He says



THERE IS CONFUSION


273


the colored soldiers were all sold-fighting for freedom was a
farce so far as they were concerned. But France is all right
if the white Americans don't get in too much propaganda. I've
been meaning to write to you, to tell you you'd better go over
there. No end of chances for you on the French stage. You
might even get in French opera. Are you sure you haven't
seen Peter, sly thing?"
"Of course I'm sure. There was really no reason why I
should. Mr. Bye and I haven't seen or heard from each
other for three years, now."
"Mr. Bye! Well, good evening, Miss High and Mighty.
If I see him I'll tell him I saw you."
"You'll do nothing of the kind. Stop all this raving, Vera,
and explain to me about Harley. Are you going to France,
too? "
Vera looked at her with a too perfect astonishment. "I
going? Joanna, how did you ever get credit for being so
brilliant, you're really quite thick-witted. Don't you see Harley's and my ways are going to lie separate forever? He is
going East and I am going-South." Her gayety forsook her.
"Joanna, don't let me cry in this awful place. I got it out of
Peter. I made him tell me. - He says Harley is bitter and
cynical. He says, over and over, Peter told me: 'Look at
these little French girls, they're really white and they don't
seem to hate me. And yet a girl of my own race hesitates to
marry me merely because she looks like white.' She pressed
her hand hard against her quivering mouth. "It seems he
can't forgive me. Peter told me so I could be prepared for
anything I might hear. Oh, Janna, this terrible country with
its false ideals! So you see why I'm glad there's the South
to go to-I've got to choose between life and death. Even if
I should lose my life in Georgia or in one of those other
terrible places where they lynch women, too, I'll save it, won't
I? I must go. Kiss me good-by, dear Janna."1



THERE IS CONFUSION


277


"Thought I'd look you up, Portor. Gee, what enthusiasm!
Nice greeting to give a fellow who's just been making your
home safe for democracy."
"Oh, can that stuff, Bye. What I want to know is this. It's
none of my business but I happen to be interested. What are
you going to do about Maggie Ellersley?"
"Wha-at! Well I'll be-  " Had he been in her train, too?
Was this why she had given him his freedom? His face clouded.
"You're right, Harry, it is none of your business. May I ask
how you horn in on this?"
"Well, if you've got to know. I'm, I'm deeply interested in
Miss Joanna Marshall and-and     "
"Hold on, I thought you were speaking of Miss Ellersley."
Their politeness was wonderful.
"Now see here, Bye, tell me, are you going to marry Miss
Ellersley?"
"I am not."
"Well, by God! you dirty cad, what do you mean by getting
engaged to one woman after another and not having any
intention of marrying either?"
Peter controlled his rising anger. "I don't want to quarrel
with you, Portor. Miss Ellersley told me in Chambery that
she didn't want to marry me, she'd made a mistake."
"And Miss Marshall," said Harry, his face clearing, "have
you told her yet?"
"No, I haven't. Miss Marshall found out she'd made a
mistake three years ago. I don't make good with the ladies,
Portor. And I'd like to know how the devil it concerns you?"
"It concerns me," said Harry miserably, "because I'm pretty
sure Joanna loves you, and I want you to make her happy, or
else get out of the way and let me try to do it." And he told
Peter how Joanna, thinking him guilty, had yet declared herself Maggie's assailant.'
Peter's natural surprise at Neal's attack on Maggie vanished



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"Yet I used to long for death, Joanna. I used to wish I'd
get done in at the Front. Did you pray for me?"
"Yes, sometimes. But I didn't think you'd die. I used to
think, though, that you'd never come back to me. I didn't see
how Maggie could ever let you go. She's married Philip, you
know."
"Yes, I know. I told Vera, hoping it would get to you." He
mused over some mysterious memory. "Well, Maggie certainly
is some girl. How's Philip?"
"Better, oh, lots better. He has a fighting chance and it's
all due to her. He's in a sanitarium and she's with him. She
should have married him long ago. It's my fault she didn't."
And she told him about the letter.
"Gosh!" Peter exclaimed inadequately, "don't you do funny
things when you're kids? Well, here we are at Bryn Mawr.
You want to wait here in the station? I don't think I'll be
long. If I am I'll send for you. I don't mind going here myself, but I don't want you to go in until I know how they're
going to treat you."
"Oh, go along," laughed Joanna, "I've been in a million of
their homes. Thought you were all over that nonsense."
He was back in a quarter of an hour, very serious. "The old
gentleman is ill, got bronchitis and they're afraid it might turn
into flu. So I left a message and the pictures and my address.
Your address, rather, Joanna dear, since I don't know just when
I'm going to move. Now we'll go to Mrs. Lea's. She's just the
next station up the line."
They boarded the local. "I wish you could have seen that
old butler, Janna. He knew my grandfather. And the moment
he saw me, he knew I was a Bye. Gave me the funniest look.
'Why,' he said, 'you'se the spit of both families!' Funny, isn't
it, Joanna; those two families, the black and the white Byes,
lived so long together that they developed similar characteristics, like husbands and wives, you know. And they say white



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She put her hand over his mouth, "Peter, you shan't say it."
"Darling, all the time I was there I was thinking: 'Suppose
this were Joanna and I were Harley Alexander, or someone,
telling her about Peter Bye! "
They were very sober after that.
At the West Philadelphia station Peter remembered a restaurant on Market Street, where he had eaten in his student days.
"I guess they'll still accommodate us. Where do you think
I'm going to take you after we eat?"
"I can't imagine, Peter."
"Out to the Park, darling. I used to dream of this in
France, when I was in that hospital."
Philadelphia, since the War, has changed for the worse in
her attitude toward colored people. But these two contrived
to get a decent meal after which they set out for the Park. It
was October again, mellow and beautiful. Joanna, tingling with
memories of the past, asked Peter nervously to tell her more of
Meriwether Bye.
"He was a wonderful man, Joanna, a real, real man and he
made me see life from an entirely different angle. He said
white men in their fight for freedom in America had had
tremendous physical odds to face and that black men had
helped them face them. Now it was our turn to fight for
freedom, only our odds were spiritual and mental obstacles,
infinitely more difficult because less tangible. 'And just as you
black men helped us, Bye,' he used to say, 'there're plenty of
white men to help you. You don't know it; for one thing,
you've shut your mind to us. Oh, you're not to blame, lots
of us aren't to be trusted; most of us, I'm afraid. But we're
ignorant and incredulous. Show us what manhood means,
Bye.'"
"He must have been wonderful, indeed, Peter."
"Yes. And yet the queerest chap., You know I told you he
had made up his mind to die. That was the difference between



THERE IS CONFUSION                  289
ever having come together. But they did. Oh, Sylvia, you
and Brian have had such a simple, easy, jog-trot time of it,
you don't know what it means to have your life all broken
up like Maggie's and mine have been, and poor Vera Manning's."
Whatever the cause, Maggie spent her days serenely. Secure not only in the knowledge that she was bulwarked by
the Marshall respectability, but also by the resolve which she
had made before she saw Philip in Chambery, she started
on the project of her Beauty Parlors.
She said to Joel who, she knew, admired her ability: "See
if you can't make me as great a success in business as you've
been." They spent many pleasant hours in consultation.



THERE IS CONFUSION


291


tears." She rarely regretted leaving the stage and although she
sang sometimes in churches and concerts and once even went on
a brief tour, she almost never danced except in the ordinary
way.
Still, as her mentality was essentially creative, she found herself more and more impelled toward the expression of the
intense appreciation of living which welled within her. Luckily
her training in music offered her some outlet. With her
slight knowledge of composition she composed two little songs
and glimpsing future possibilities, she began to study that
most fascinating of all the sciences-harmony.
-The change in Peter was more fundamental than that in
Joanna. She at least had always had these possibilities of
domesticity. Her desire for greatness had been a sort of
superimposed structure which, having been taken off, left her
her true self. It was as though her life had expanded on the
plan of Holmes' admonition to the Chambered Nautilus:
Leave thy low vaulted PastLet each new temple,
Nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven
With a dome more vast
Till thou at length art free,Joanna was free.
But Peter had had to undergo a complete metamorphosis.
He was a supersensitive colored man living among hosts of
indifferent white people. Not only had he to change in every
particular his theory of how to maintain such a relationship,
but indeed he had to decide what sort of relationship was worth
maintaining. At his father's death and during his young
manhood he had been absolutely without a notion of the
responsibilities which the most average man expects to take
upon himself. He looked back with a real shame and chagrin



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