Darkwater Part 8

Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. I shall go and report to Kioto."

So in the dim waning of the day before Christmas three bishops met in Valdosta and saw its mills and storehouses, its wide-throated and sandy streets, in the mellow glow of a crimson sun. The governor glared anxiously up the street as he helped the bishop of New York into his car and welcomed him graciously.

"I am troubled," said the governor, "about the n.i.g.g.e.rs. They are acting queerly. I'm not certain but Fleming is back of it."

"Fleming?"

"Yes! He's running against me next term for governor; he's a firebrand; wants n.i.g.g.e.rs to vote and all that--pardon me a moment, there's a darky I know--" and he hurried to the black bishop, who had just descended from the "Jim-Crow" car, and clasped his hand cordially. They talked in whispers. "Search diligently," said the governor in parting, "and bring me word again." Then returning to his guest, "You will excuse me, won't you?" he asked, "but I am sorely troubled! I never saw n.i.g.g.e.rs act so.

They're leaving by the hundreds and those who stay are getting impudent!

They seem to be expecting something. What's the crowd, Jim?"

The chauffeur said that there was some sort of Chinese official in town and everybody wanted to glimpse him. He drove around another way.

It all happened very suddenly. The bishop of New York, in full canonicals for the early wedding, stepped out on the rear balcony of his mansion, just as the dying sun lit crimson clouds of glory in the East and burned the West.

"Fire!" yelled a wag in the surging crowd that was gathering to celebrate a southern Christmas-eve; all laughed and ran.

The bishop of New York did not understand. He peered around. Was it that dark, little house in the far backyard that flamed? Forgetful of his robes he hurried down,--a brave, white figure in the sunset. He found himself before an old, black, rickety stable. He could hear the mules stamping within.

No. It was not fire. It was the sunset glowing through the cracks.

Behind the hut its glory rose toward G.o.d like flaming wings of cherubim.

He paused until he heard the faint wail of a child. Hastily he entered.

A white girl crouched before him, down by the very mules' feet, with a baby in her arms,-a little mite of a baby that wailed weakly. Behind mother and child stood a shadow. The bishop of New York turned to the right, inquiringly, and saw a black man in bishop's robes that faintly re-echoed his own. He turned away to the left and saw a golden j.a.panese in golden garb. Then he heard the black man mutter behind him: "But He was to come the second time in clouds of glory, with the nations gathered around Him and angels--" at the word a shaft of glorious light fell full upon the child, while without came the tramping of unnumbered feet and the whirring of wings.

The bishop of New York bent quickly over the baby. It was black! He stepped back with a gesture of disgust, hardly listening to and yet hearing the black bishop, who spoke almost as if in apology:

"She's not really white; I know Lucy--you see, her mother worked for the governor--" The white bishop turned on his heel and nearly trod on the yellow priest, who knelt with bowed head before the pale mother and offered incense and a gift of gold.

Out into the night rushed the bishop of New York. The wings of the cherubim were folded black against the stars. As he hastened down the front staircase the governor came rushing up the street steps.

"We are late!" he cried nervously. "The bride awaits!" He hurried the bishop to the waiting limousine, asking him anxiously: "Did you hear anything? Do you hear that noise? The crowd is growing strangely on the streets and there seems to be a fire over toward the East. I never saw so many people here--I fear violence--a mob--a lynching--I fear--hark!"

What was that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered feet? Deep in his heart a wonder grew. What was it? Ah, he knew! It was music,--some strong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward them. So high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind them. The governor, ashen-faced, crouched in the car; but the bishop said softly as the ecstasy pulsed in his heart:

"Such music, such wedding music! What choir is it?"

V

"THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE"

The lady looked at me severely; I glanced away. I had addressed the little audience at some length on the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of my people in society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided the while her cold, green eye. I finished and shook weary hands, while she lay in wait. I knew what was coming and braced my soul.

"Do you know where I can get a good colored cook?" she asked. I disclaimed all guilty concupiscence. She came nearer and spitefully shook a finger in my face.

"Why--won't--Negroes--work!" she panted. "I have given money for years to Hampton and Tuskegee and yet I can't get decent servants. They won't try. They're lazy! They're unreliable! They're impudent and they leave without notice. They all want to be lawyers and doctors and" (she spat the word in venom) "ladies!"

"G.o.d forbid!" I answered solemnly, and then being of gentle birth, and unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, I ran; I ran home and wrote a chapter in my book and this is it.

I speak and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk, however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its dirt and noise and low wage. The factory was closed to us. Our little lands were too small to feed most of us. A few clung almost sullenly to the old homes, low and red things crouching on a wide level; but the children stirred restlessly and walked often to town and saw its wonders. Slowly they dribbled off,--a waiter here, a cook there, help for a few weeks in Mrs. Blank's kitchen when she had summer boarders.

Instinctively I hated such work from my birth. I loathed it and shrank from it. Why? I could not have said. Had I been born in Carolina instead of Ma.s.sachusetts I should hardly have escaped the taint of "service."

Its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my scruples; and yet I am sure I would have fought long even in Carolina, for I knew in my heart that thither lay h.e.l.l.

I mowed lawns on contract, did "ch.o.r.es" that left me my own man, sold papers, and peddled tea--anything to escape the shadow of the awful thing that lurked to grip my soul. Once, and once only, I felt the sting of its talons. I was twenty and had graduated from Fisk with a scholarship for Harvard; I needed, however, travel money and clothes and a bit to live on until the scholarship was due. Fortson was a fellow-student in winter and a waiter in summer. He proposed that the Glee Club Quartet of Fisk spend the summer at the hotel in Minnesota where he worked and that I go along as "Business Manager" to arrange for engagements on the journey back. We were all eager, but we knew nothing of table-waiting. "Never mind," said Fortson, "you can stand around the dining-room during meals and carry out the big wooden trays of dirty dishes. Thus you can pick up knowledge of waiting and earn good tips and get free board." I listened askance, but I went.

I entered that broad and blatant hotel at Lake Minnetonka with distinct forebodings. The flamboyant architecture, the great verandas, rich furniture, and richer dresses awed us mightily. The long loft reserved for us, with its clean little cots, was rea.s.suring; the work was not difficult,--but the meals! There were no meals. At first, before the guests ate, a dirty table in the kitchen was hastily strewn with uneatable sc.r.a.ps. We novices were the only ones who came to eat, while the guests' dining-room, with its savors and sights, set our appet.i.tes on edge! After a while even the pretense of meals for us was dropped. We were sure we were going to starve when Dug, one of us, made a startling discovery: the waiters stole their food and they stole the best. We gulped and hesitated. Then we stole, too, (or, at least, they stole and I shared) and we all fattened, for the dainties were marvelous. You slipped a bit here and hid it there; you cut off extra portions and gave false orders; you dashed off into darkness and hid in corners and ate and ate! It was nasty business. I hated it. I was too cowardly to steal much myself, and not coward enough to refuse what others stole.

Our work was easy, but insipid. We stood about and watched overdressed people gorge. For the most part we were treated like furniture and were supposed to act the wooden part. I watched the waiters even more than the guests. I saw that it paid to amuse and to cringe. One particular black man set me crazy. He was intelligent and deft, but one day I caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the clown,--crouching, grinning, a.s.suming a broad dialect when he usually spoke good English--ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more money than any waiter in the dining-room.

I did not mind the actual work or the kind of work, but it was the dishonesty and deception, the flattery and cajolery, the unnatural a.s.sumption that worker and diner had no common humanity. It was uncanny.

It was inherently and fundamentally wrong. I stood staring and thinking, while the other boys hustled about. Then I noticed one fat hog, feeding at a heavily gilded trough, who could not find his waiter. He beckoned me. It was not his voice, for his mouth was too full. It was his way, his air, his a.s.sumption. Thus Caesar ordered his legionaries or Cleopatra her slaves. Dogs recognized the gesture. I did not. He may be beckoning yet for all I know, for something froze within me. I did not look his way again. Then and there I disowned menial service for me and my people.

I would work my hands off for an honest wage, but for "tips" and "hand-me-outs," never! Fortson was a pious, honest fellow, who regarded "tips" as in the nature of things, being to the manner born; but the hotel that summer in other respects rather astonished even him. He came to us much flurried one night and got us to help him with a memorial to the absentee proprietor, telling of the wild and gay doings of midnights in the rooms and corridors among "tired" business men and their prost.i.tutes. We listened wide-eyed and eager and wrote the filth out manfully. The proprietor did not thank Fortson. He did not even answer the letter.

When I finally walked out of that hotel and out of menial service forever, I felt as though, in a field of flowers, my nose had been held unpleasantly long to the worms and manure at their roots.

"Cursed be Canaan!" cried the Hebrew priests. "A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." With what characteristic complacency did the slaveholders a.s.sume that Canaanites were Negroes and their "brethren" white? Are not Negroes servants? _Ergo_! Upon such spiritual myths was the anachronism of American slavery built, and this was the degradation that once made menial servants the aristocrats among colored folk. House servants secured some decencies of food and clothing and shelter; they could more easily reach their master's ear; their personal abilities of character became known and bonds grew between slave and master which strengthened from friendship to love, from mutual service to mutual blood.

Naturally out of this the West Indian servant climbed out of slavery into citizenship, for few West Indian masters--fewer Spanish or Dutch--were callous enough to sell their own children into slavery. Not so with English and Americans. With a harshness and indecency seldom paralleled in the civilized world white masters on the mainland sold their mulatto children, half-brothers and half-sisters, and their own wives in all but name, into life-slavery by the hundreds and thousands.

They originated a special branch of slave-trading for this trade and the white aristocrats of Virginia and the Carolinas made more money by this business during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than in any other way.

The clang of the door of opportunity thus knelled in the ears of the colored house servant whirled the whole face of Negro advancement as on some great pivot. The movement was slow, but vast. When emanc.i.p.ation came, before and after 1863, the house servant still held advantages. He had whatever education the race possessed and his white father, no longer able to sell him, often helped him with land and protection.

Notwithstanding this the lure of house service for the Negro was gone.

The path of salvation for the emanc.i.p.ated host of black folk lay no longer through the kitchen door, with its wide hall and pillared veranda and flowered yard beyond. It lay, as every Negro soon knew and knows, in escape from menial serfdom.

In 1860, 98 per cent of the Negroes were servants and serfs. In 1880, 30 per cent were servants and 65 per cent were serfs. The percentage of servants then rose slightly and fell again until 21 per cent were in service in 1910 and, doubtless, much less than 20 per cent today. This is the measure of our rise, but the Negro will not approach freedom until this hateful badge of slavery and mediaevalism has been reduced to less than 10 per cent.

Not only are less than a fifth of our workers servants today, but the character of their service has been changed. The million menial workers among us include 300,000 upper servants,--skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to subst.i.tute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food.

But the labor movement turned their backs on those black men when the white world dinned in their ears. _Negroes are servants; servants are Negroes._ They shut the door of escape to factory and trade in their fellows' faces and battened down the hatches, lest the 300,000 should be workers equal in pay and consideration with white men.

But, if the upper servants could not escape to modern, industrial conditions, how much the more did they press down on the bodies and souls of 700,000 washerwomen and household drudges,--ignorant, unskilled offal of a millionaire industrial system. Their pay was the lowest and their hours the longest of all workers. The personal degradation of their work is so great that any white man of decency would rather cut his daughter's throat than let her grow up to such a destiny. There is throughout the world and in all races no greater source of prost.i.tution than this grade of menial service, and the Negro race in America has largely escaped this destiny simply because its innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary s.e.xual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers. To such s.e.xual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless changes of masters.

Indeed, here among American Negroes we have exemplified the last and worst refuge of industrial caste. Menial service is an anachronism,--the refuse of mediaeval barbarism. Whey, then, does it linger? Why are we silent about it? Why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks does the whole Negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their getting a cook or a maid?

No one knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic service at its best. I have seen children who were spiritual sons and daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses, and old servants honored and revered. But in every such case the Servant had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage.

Now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same revolution in household help as in factory help and public service.

While organized industry has been slowly making its help into self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of men from the worst conditions.

The cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold. First, the ancient high estate of Service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath; secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven.

The Master spoke no greater word than that which said: "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant!" What is greater than Personal Service! Surely no social service, no wholesale helping of ma.s.ses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty in the personal aid of man to man. It is the purest and holiest of duties. Some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the First Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, the Keepers of the Robes, and the Knights of the Bath, the highest n.o.bility that hedged an anointed king.