“Wait till I get back,” he called, nodding toward the coming passenger.
The young colored woman approached. She was well dressed but a bit prim. She had Lower Six. Matthew sensed trouble, but remembering Jimmie’s admonition, he showed her to her berth. She did not look at him, but he carefully arranged her things.
The conductor came back. “What did you put her there for?” he asked.
“She had a ticket for Six,” Matthew answered. Both he and the conductor knew that she had not bought that ticket in person. In Washington, they would never have sold a colored person going south Number Six—she’d have got One or Twelve or nothing. The conductor was mad. It meant trouble for him all next day from every Southerner who boarded the train.
“Tell her there’s some mistake—I’ll move her later.” But Matthew did not tell her. On the contrary, he suggested to her that he make her berth. She knew why he suggested it, and she resented it, but consented without glancing at him. He sympathized even with her resentment. The conductor swore when he came through with the train conductor and found her retired, but he could do nothing, and Matthew merely professed to have misunderstood.
In the morning after an almost sleepless night and without breakfast, Matthew took special care of the dark lady, and when she was ready, carried her bag to the empty drawing-room and let her dress there in comfort. There again he felt and understood the resentment in her attitude. She could not be treated quite like other passengers. Yet she must know it was not his fault, and perhaps she did not know that the extra work of straightening up the drawing-room at the close of a twenty-four-hour trip was no joke. Still, he smiled in a friendly way at her as he brought her back to the seat which he had arranged first, so as to put her to the least unpleasantness from sitting in some other berth. A woman flounced up and away as the girl sat down.
She thanked Matthew primly. She was afraid to be familiar with a porter. He might presume. She was not pretty, but round-faced, light brown, with black, crinkly hair. She was dressed with taste, and Matthew judged that she was probably a teacher or clerk. She had a cold half-defiant air which Matthew understood. This class of his people were being bred that way by the eternal conflict. Yet, he reflected, they might say something pleasant and have some genial glow for the encouragement of others caught in the same toils.
Then, as ever, his mind flew back to Berlin and to the woman of his dreams and quest. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. He had searched the newspapers and unearthed but one small note in the New York Sunday Times, which proved that the Princess was actually on the Gigantic: “Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Bwodpur, has been visiting quietly with friends while en route from England to her home in India, by way of Seattle.” He smiled a bit dubiously; what had porters and princesses in common?
He came back to earth and began the daily struggle with the brushing and the bags through narrow aisles out to the door; to collect the coats and belongings and carefully brush the clothes of twenty people; to wait for, take, and appear thankful for the tip which was wage and yet might be thrown like alms; to find lost passengers in the smoking-car, toilet, or dining-room and lost hats, umbrellas, packages, and canes—Matthew came to dread the end of his journeys more than all else.
His colored passenger did “not care” to be brushed. As they rolled slowly through the yards, he glanced at her again.
“Anything I can do for you?” he asked.
“Aren’t you a college man?” she asked, rather abruptly.
“I was,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his face.
She regarded him severely. “I should think then you’d be ashamed to be a porter,” she said.
He bit his lips and gathered up her bags.
“It’s a damned good thing for you that I am,” he wanted to say; but he was silent. He only hoped desperately that she would not offer to tip him. But she did; she gave him fifteen cents. He thanked her.
IV
With a day off in Atlanta, Matthew and Jimmie looked up Perigua’s friends. Jimmie laughed at the venture, although Matthew did not tell him much of his plans and reasons.
“Don’t worry,” grinned Jimmie; “let the white folks worry; it’ll all come out right.”
They had a difficult time finding any of the persons to whom Perigua had referred Matthew. First, they went down to Decatur Street. It was the first time Matthew had been so far south or so near the black belt. The September heat was intense, and the flood of black folk overwhelmed him. After all, what did he know of these people, of their thoughts, ambitions, hurts, plans? Suppose Perigua really knew and that he who thought he knew was densely ignorant? They walked over to Auburn Avenue. Could anyone tell them where the office of the Arrow was? It was up “yonder.” Matthew and Jimmie climbed to an attic. It was empty, but a notice sent them to a basement three blocks away—empty, too, and without notice. Then they ran across the editor in a barber shop where they were inquiring—a little, silent, black man with sharp eyes. No, the Arrow was temporarily suspended and had been for a year. Perigua? Oh, yes.
“Well, there could be a conference tonight at eight in the Odd Fellows Hall—one of the small rooms.”
“At what hour?”
“Well, you know colored people.”
If he came at nine he’d be early. Yes, he knew Perigua. No,
