“Here, let me help you.” Together the two men got Alexander into the chair. He was the type with whom any physical indisposition goes hard. Peter noticed he was shivering.
“Wait, I’ll get a rug,” he said, starting toward the door. 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 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 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 great-grandfather, 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 fortune—for 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
