Joanna, having come to understand the nothingness of that inordinate craving for sheer success, surprised herself by the pleasure which came to her out of what she had always considered the ordinary things of life. Realizing how nearly she had lost the essentials in grasping after the trimmings of existence, she experienced a deep, almost holy joy in the routine of the day. To see about her, her husband and parents, little Meriwether usually in Joel’s arms, gave her, she confessed almost shamefacedly to Sylvia, “thoughts that lay too deep for tears.” She rarely regretted leaving the stage and although she sang sometimes in churches and concerts and once even went on a brief tour, she almost never danced except in the ordinary way.
Still, as her mentality was essentially creative, she found herself more and more impelled toward the expression of the intense appreciation of living which welled within her. Luckily her training in music offered her some outlet. With her slight knowledge of composition she composed two little songs and glimpsing future possibilities, she began to study that most fascinating of all the sciences—harmony.
The change in Peter was more fundamental than that in Joanna. She at least had always had these possibilities of domesticity. Her desire for greatness had been a sort of superimposed structure which, having been taken off, left her her true self. It was as though her life had expanded on the plan of Holmes’ admonition to the Chambered Nautilus:
Leave thy low vaulted Past—
Let each new temple,
Nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven
With a dome more vast
Till thou at length art free—
Joanna was free.
But Peter had had to undergo a complete metamorphosis. He was a supersensitive colored man living among hosts of indifferent white people. Not only had he to change in every particular his theory of how to maintain such a relationship, but indeed he had to decide what sort of relationship was worth maintaining. At his father’s death and during his young manhood he had been absolutely without a notion of the responsibilities which the most average man expects to take upon himself. He looked back with a real shame and chagrin to the many favors which he had accepted without question from his Aunt Susan.
Joanna, clever Joanna, helped him here. She was not only naturally independent, but she was, for all her talent, essentially practical with that clearheadedness which artistic people exhibit sometimes in such unexpected fashion. Perhaps it is wrong to imply that Joanna had lost her ambition. She was still ambitious, only the field of her ambition lay without herself. It was Peter now whom she wished to see succeed. If his success depended ever so little on his achievement of a sense of responsibility, then she meant to develop that sense. To this end, she consulted him, she took his advice, she asked him to arrange about the few recitals which she undertook. In a thousand little ways she deferred to him, and showed him that as a matter of course he was the arbiter of her own and her child’s destiny, the fons et origo of authority.
So he grew both in the spirit of racial tolerance and in the spirit of responsibility. He wanted to live in America; he wanted to get along with his fellow man, but he no longer proposed to let circumstances shape his career. No one but himself, not even Joanna, should captain his ship. He meant to be a successful surgeon, a responsible husband and father, a self-reliant man.
The memory of Meriwether Bye, never far distant, braced him constantly. The young physician’s words and ideas had exercised a singleness of concentration, of influence over Peter such as a friendship of long standing could hardly have hoped to achieve.
For a long time he expected to hear from Meriwether’s grandfather. Then as the months and nearly two years rolled by without a sign from Bryn Mawr, Peter decided that the old gentleman wished to spare himself the pain of learning more of the circumstances surrounding his grandson’s death.
Sylvia’s boy, Roger, captivated by his new soldier-uncle, spent most of his time at Peter’s house serving in the purely impressionistic capacity of office-boy. He came up to the sitting room one summer morning bearing a bit of cardboard between his fingers.
“Meriwether Bye,” he pronounced, handing the card to Peter. “Ain’t it funny he should have the same name as the kid? But he’s no relation because he’s white and as old as the hills.”
“Meriwether’s grandfather!” Peter said in astonishment. “Come on down with me, Joanna.”
Together they descended to find an old, old man sitting in an absolutely immobile silence in Peter’s office. He rose, a tall, straight, white figure and looked at the two young people, still in silence.
“I’m Peter Bye,” the young man said, coming forward. “Won’t you sit down? Sit here, Joanna.”
Together they sat in a strange, strained quiet, Joanna watching Peter in whom she sensed the rising anew of the antagonism of all the years. There they were, she felt, representing the last of the old order and the first of the new, since Peter’s generation was the first to escape the effect of the ancient regime, and he personally had not completely escaped it. How many things this ancient, stately personage who sat regarding them with keen though inscrutable eyes could have told them of the circumstances which had combined to make the two of them what they were! For this old man’s whole life and fortune had been reared on the institution of slavery.
Out of the puzzling silence he spoke, in the expressionless, brittle tone of extreme old age. “Yes, I know you are a Bye, Isaiah Bye’s grandson. And you were with Meriwether at the end. Tell me about it.”
Very solemnly, almost pityingly, Peter began the recital of his brief,
