“I worked in two restaurants; one on Walnut Street, splendid and beautiful. The patrons usually were kind and thoughtful, with only now and then an overdressed woman who had to express her superiority by the loudness of her tones, or a man who was slyly insulting or openly silly. Only the kitchen and the corridors bruised me by their contrast and ugliness. Singularly enough in this place of food and plenty, the only proper food we waitresses could get to eat was stolen food. I hated the stealing, but I was hungry and tired. From there I went down to South Street to a colored restaurant and worked a long time. It was an easygoing place with poor food and poor people, but kind. They crowded in at all hours, They were well-meaning, inquisitive; and if a busy workingman or a well-dressed idler sought to take my hand or touch my body he did it half jokingly and usually not twice.”
“Servant, tobacco-hand, waitress; mud, dirt, and servility for the education of a queen,” groaned Matthew.
“And is there any field where a queen’s education is more neglected? Think what I learned of the mass of men! I got to know the patrons: their habits, hardships, histories. I was the friend of the proprietors, woman and husband; but the enterprise didn’t pay. It failed. I cried. But just as it was closing I learned of your release, and after but a year, suddenly I was in heaven. I thought I had already atoned.
“But I knew that yet I must wait. That you must find your way and begin to adjust your life before I dared come into it again. And so I went to New York, that my dream of life and of the meaning of life to the mass of men might be more complete.
“I discovered a paper box-making factory on the lower East Side. It was a nonunion shop and I worked in a basement that stank of glue and waste, ten and twelve hours a day for six dollars a week. It was sweated labor of the lowest type, and I was aghast. Then the workers tried to organize—there was a strike. I was beaten and jailed for picketing, but I did not care. That which was begun as a game and source of experience to me became suddenly real life. I became an agent, organizer, and officer of the union. I knew my fellow laborers, in home and on street, in factory and restaurant. I studied the industry and the law, I traveled, made speeches, and organized. Oh, Matthew it was life, life, real life, even with the squalor and hard toil.”
“Yes, it was life. And the Veil of Color lifted from your eyes as it is lifting even from my blindness. Those people there, these here they are all alike, all one. They are all foolish, ignorant, and exploited. Their highest ambition is to escape from themselves—from being black, from being poor, from being ugly into some high heaven from which they can gaze down and despise themselves.”
“True, my Matthew, and while I was learning all this which you long knew, you seemed to me striving to unlearn. Oh, how I watched over you! You came down to Virginia. Hidden in the forest, I watched with wet eyes. Hidden in the cabin, I heard your voice. I caught the sob in your throat when your mammy told of my coming. I knew you loved me still, and I wanted to rush into your arms. But, ‘Not yet—not yet!’ said your wise old mother.
“I was working busily and happily when the second blow fell, the blow that came to deny everything, that seemed to say that you were not self of my own self and life of the life which I was sharing in every pulse with you. You married. I gave up.”
“You did not understand, Kautilya. You seemed lost to me forever. I was blindly groping for some counterfeit of peace. If I had only known you were here and caring!”
“I went down again to Virginia and knelt beside your mother, and she only smiled. ‘He ain’t married,’ she said. ‘He only thinks he is. He was wild like, and didn’t know where to turn or what to do. Wait, wait.’
“I waited. You would not listen to my messengers whom continually I sent to you—the statesmen of Japan, the Chinese, the groping president of the Box-Makers. Like Galahad you would not ask the meaning of the sign. You would not name my name. How could I know, dearest, what I meant to you? And yet my thought and care hovered and watched over you. I knew Sammy and Sara and I saw your slow and sure descent to hell. I tried to save you by sending human beings to you. You helped them, but you did not know them. I tried again when you were sitting in the legislature down at Springfield. You knew, but you would not understand. You sneered at the truth. You would not come at my call.”
“I did not know it was your voice, Kautilya.”
“You knew the voice of our cause, Matthew—was that not my voice?”
Matthew was silent. Kautilya stroked his hand.
“We met in London, the leaders of a thousand million of the darker peoples, with, for the first time, black Africa and black America sitting beside the rest. I was proud of the Negroes we had chosen after long search. There were to be forty of us, and, Matthew, only you were absent. I looked for you to the last. It seemed that you must come. We organized, we planned, and one great new thing emerged—your word, Matthew, your prophecy: we recognized democracy as a method of discovering real aristocracy.
