The Souls of Black Folk
faltered, “but—I haven’t graduated!” Then the Dean slowly and clearly
explained, reminding him of the tardiness and the carelessness, of the
poor lessons and neglected work, of the noise and disorder, until the
fellow hung his head in confusion. Then he said quickly, “But you won’t
tell mammy and sister,—you won’t write mammy, now will you? For if you
won’t I’ll go out into the city and work, and come back next term and
show you something.” So the Dean promised faithfully, and John
shouldered his little trunk, giving neither word nor look to the
giggling boys, and walked down Carlisle Street to the great city, with
sober eyes and a set and serious face.
Perhaps we imagined it, but someway it seemed to us that the serious
look that crept over his boyish face that afternoon never left it
again. When he came back to us he went to work with all his rugged
strength. It was a hard struggle, for things did not come easily to
him,—few crowding memories of early life and teaching came to help him
on his new way; but all the world toward which he strove was of his own
building, and he builded slow and hard. As the light dawned lingeringly
on his new creations, he sat rapt and silent before the vision, or
wandered alone over the green campus peering through and beyond the
world of men into a world of thought. And the thoughts at times puzzled
him sorely; he could not see just why the circle was not square, and
carried it out fifty-six decimal places one midnight,—would have gone
further, indeed, had not the matron rapped for lights out. He caught
terrible colds lying on his back in the meadows of nights, trying to
think out the solar system; he had grave doubts as to the ethics of the
Fall of Rome, and strongly suspected the Germans of being thieves and
rascals, despite his textbooks; he pondered long over every new Greek
word, and wondered why this meant that and why it couldn’t mean
something else, and how it must have felt to think all things in Greek.
So he thought and puzzled along for himself,—pausing perplexed where
others skipped merrily, and walking steadily through the difficulties
where the rest stopped and surrendered.
Thus he grew in body and soul, and with him his clothes seemed to grow
and arrange themselves; coat sleeves got longer, cuffs appeared, and
collars got less soiled. Now and then his boots shone, and a new
dignity crept into his walk. And we who saw daily a new thoughtfulness
growing in his eyes began to expect something of this plodding boy.
Thus he passed out of the preparatory school into college, and we who
watched him felt four more years of change, which almost transformed
the tall, grave man who bowed to us commencement morning. He had left
his queer thought-world and come back to a world of motion and of men.
He looked now for the first time sharply about him, and wondered he had
seen so little before. He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time
the Veil that lay between him and the white world; he first noticed now
the oppression that had not seemed oppression before, differences that
erstwhile seemed natural, restraints and slights that in his boyhood
days had gone unnoticed or been greeted with a laugh. He felt angry now
when men did not call him “Mister,” he clenched his hands at the “Jim
Crow” cars, and chafed at the color-line that hemmed in him and his. A
tinge of sarcasm crept into his speech, and a vague bitterness into his
life; and he sat long hours wondering and planning a way around these
crooked things. Daily he found himself shrinking from the choked and
narrow life of his native town. And yet he always planned to go back to
Altamaha,—always planned to work there. Still, more and more as the day
approached he hesitated with a nameless dread; and even the day after
graduation he seized with eagerness the offer of the Dean to send him
North with the quartette during the summer vacation, to sing for the
Institute. A breath of air before the plunge, he said to himself in
half apology.
It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were
brilliant with moving men. They reminded John of the sea, as he sat in
the square and watched them, so changelessly changing, so bright and
dark, so grave and gay. He scanned their rich and faultless clothes,
the way they carried their hands, the shape of their hats; he peered
into the hurrying carriages. Then, leaning back with a sigh, he said,
“This is the World.” The notion suddenly seized him to see where the
world was going; since many of the richer and brighter seemed hurrying
all one way. So when a tall, light-haired young man and a little
talkative lady came by, he rose half hesitatingly and followed them. Up
the street they went, past stores and gay shops, across a broad square,
until with a hundred others they entered the high portal of a great
building.
He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his
pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded. There seemed really
no time for hesitation, so he drew it bravely out, passed it to the
busy clerk, and received simply a ticket but no change. When at last he
realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he
stood stockstill amazed. “Be careful,” said a low voice behind him;
“you must not lynch the colored gentleman simply because he’s in your
way,” and a girl looked up roguishly into the eyes of her fair-haired
escort. A shade of annoyance passed over the escort’s face. “You _will_
not understand us at the South,” he said half impatiently, as if
continuing an argument. “With all your professions, one never sees in
the North so cordial and intimate relations between white and black as
are everyday occurrences with us. Why, I remember my closest playfellow
in boyhood was a little Negro named after me, and surely no
two,—_well_!” The man stopped short and flushed to the roots of his
hair, for there directly beside his reserved orchestra chairs sat the
Negro he had stumbled over in the hallway. He hesitated and grew pale
with anger, called the usher and gave him his card, with a few
peremptory words, and slowly sat down. The lady deftly changed the
subject.
All this John did not see, for he sat in a half-daze minding the scene
about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the
moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed
all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more
beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and
started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of
Lohengrin’s swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept
through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his
eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the
lady’s arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his
heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that
low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up
in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of
blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all? And if he
had called, what right had he to call when a world like this lay open
before men?
Then the movement changed, and fuller, mightier harmony swelled away.
He looked thoughtfully across the hall, and wondered why the beautiful
gray-haired woman looked so listless, and what the little man could be
whispering about. He would not like to be listless and idle, he
thought, for he felt with the music the movement of power within him.
If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard,—aye, bitter
hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility, without the
cruel hurt that hardened his heart and soul. When at last a soft sorrow
crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off
home, the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his
mother. And his heart sank below the waters, even as the sea-sand sinks
by the shores of Altamaha, only to be lifted aloft again with that last
ethereal wail of the swan that quivered and faded away into the sky.
It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time
notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying
politely, “Will you step this way, please, sir?” A little surprised, he
arose quickly at the last tap, and, turning to leave his seat, looked
full into the face of the fair-haired young man. For the first time the
young man recognized his dark boyhood playmate, and John knew that it
was the Judge’s son. The White John started, lifted his hand, and then
froze into his chair; the black John smiled lightly, then grimly, and
followed the usher down the aisle. The manager was sorry, very, very
sorry,—but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the
gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of
course,—and indeed felt the matter keenly, and so forth, and—before he
had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square and
down the broad streets, and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat
and said, “John Jones, you’re a natural-born fool.” Then he went to his
lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and
threw it in the fire. Then he seized a scrap of paper and wrote: “Dear
Mother and Sister—I am coming—John.”
“Perhaps,” said John, as he settled himself on the train, “perhaps I am
to blame myself in struggling against my manifest destiny simply
because it looks hard and unpleasant. Here is my duty to Altamaha plain
before me; perhaps they’ll let me help settle the Negro problems
there,—perhaps they won’t. ‘I will go in to the King, which is not
according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.’” And then he mused
and dreamed, and planned a life-work; and the train flew south.
Down in Altamaha, after seven long years, all the world knew John was
coming. The homes were scrubbed and scoured,—above all, one; the
gardens and yards had an unwonted trimness, and Jennie bought a new
gingham. With some finesse and negotiation, all the dark Methodists and
Presbyterians were induced to join in a monster welcome at the Baptist
Church; and as the day drew near, warm discussions arose on every
corner as to the exact extent and nature of John’s accomplishments. It
was noontide on a gray and cloudy day when he came. The black town
flocked to the depot, with a little of the white at the edges,—a happy
throng, with “Good-mawnings” and “Howdys” and laughing and joking and
jostling. Mother sat yonder in the window watching; but sister Jennie
stood on the platform, nervously fingering her dress, tall and lithe,
with soft brown skin and loving eyes peering from out a tangled
wilderness of hair. John rose gloomily as the train stopped, for he was
thinking of the “Jim Crow” car; he stepped to the platform, and paused:
a little dingy station, a black crowd gaudy and dirty, a half-mile of
dilapidated shanties along a straggling ditch of mud. An overwhelming
sense of the sordidness and narrowness of it all seized him; he looked
in vain for his mother, kissed coldly the tall, strange girl who called
him brother, spoke a short, dry word here and there; then, lingering
neither for handshaking nor gossip, started silently up the street,
raising his hat merely to the last eager old aunty, to her open-mouthed
astonishment. The people were distinctly bewildered. This silent, cold
man,—was this John? Where was his smile and hearty hand-grasp? “’Peared
kind o’ down in the mouf,” said the Methodist preacher thoughtfully.
“Seemed monstus stuck up,” complained a Baptist sister. But the white
postmaster from the edge of the crowd expressed the opinion of his
folks plainly. “That damn Nigger,” said he, as he shouldered the mail