Sunday was still a happy day. Already an air of prosperity, of having arrived beyond the striving point, had settled over the family. Mr. Murray’s negotiations with Tom Hallowell had been most successful. The Ford, a little four-seater coupé, compact and sturdy, had changed hands. Its former owner came around on Sunday to give Junius a lesson. The entire household piled in, for both girls were possessed of the modern slenderness. They rode out Jefferson Street and far, far out Ridge Avenue to the Wissahickon and on to Chestnut Hill. From time to time, when the traffic was thin, Junius took the wheel, anticipating Tom’s instructions with the readiness of the born mechanic. They came back laughing and happy and pardonably proud. The dense, tender glow of the late afternoon September sun flooded the little parlour, the dining-room was dusky and the kitchen was redolent of scents of gingerbread and spiced preserves. After supper there were no lessons to get. “It’ll be years before I forget all that stuff I learned in practice school,” said Jinny gaily.
Later on some boys came in; Matthew Henson inevitably, peering dissatisfied through the autumn gloom for Angela and immediately content when he saw her; Arthur Sawyer, who had just entered the School of Pedagogy and was a little ashamed of it, for he considered teaching work fit only for women. “But I’ve got to make a living somehow, ain’t I? And I won’t go into that post-office!”
“What’s the matter with the post-office?” Henson asked indignantly. He had just been appointed. In reality he did not fancy the work himself, but he did not want it decried before Angela.
“Tell me what better or surer job is there for a coloured man in Philadelphia?”
“Nothing,” said Sawyer promptly, “not a thing in the world except school teaching. But that’s just what I object to. I’m sick of planning my life with regard to being coloured. I’m not a bit ashamed of my race. I don’t mind in the least that once we were slaves. Every race in the world has at some time occupied a servile position. But I do mind having to take it into consideration every time I want to eat outside of my home, every time I enter a theatre, every time I think of a profession.”
“But you do have to take it into consideration,” said Jinny softly. “At present it’s one of the facts of our living, just as lameness or nearsightedness might be for a white man.”
The inevitable race discussion was on. “Ah, but there you’re all off, Miss Virginia.” A tall, lanky, rather supercilious youth spoke up from the corner. He had been known to them all their lives as Franky Porter, but he had taken lately to publishing poems in the Philadelphia Tribunal which he signed F. Seymour Porter. “Really you’re all off, for you speak as though colour itself were a deformity. Whereas, as Miss Angela being an artist knows, colour may really be a very beautiful thing, mayn’t it?”
“Oh don’t drag me into your old discussion,” Angela answered crossly. “I’m sick of this whole race business if you ask me. And don’t call me Miss Angela. Call me Angela as you’ve all done all our lives or else call me Miss Murray. No, I don’t think being coloured in America is a beautiful thing. I think it’s nothing short of a curse.”
“Well,” said Porter slowly, “I think its being or not being a curse rests with you. You’ve got to decide whether or not you’re going to let it interfere with personal development and to that extent it may be harmful or it may be an incentive. I take it that Sawyer here, who even when we were all kids always wanted to be an engineer, will transmute his colour either into a bane or a blessing according to whether he lets it make him hide his natural tendencies under the bushel of school-teaching or become an inspiration toward making him the very best kind of engineer that there ever was so that people will just have to take him for what he is and overlook the fact of colour.”
“That’s it,” said Jinny. “You know, being coloured often does spur you on.”
“And that’s what I object to,” Angela answered perversely. “I’m sick of this business of always being below or above a certain norm. Doesn’t anyone think that we have a right to be happy simply, naturally?”
Gradually they drifted into music. Virginia played a few popular songs and presently the old beautiful airs of all time, “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” and “Sweet and Low.” Arthur Sawyer had a soft, melting tenor and Angela a rather good alto; Virginia and the other boys carried the air while Junius boomed his deep, unyielding bass. The lovely melodies and the peace of the happy, tranquil household crept over them, and presently they exchanged farewells and the young men passed wearied and contented out into the dark confines of Opal Street. Angela and Mattie went upstairs, but Viginia and her father stayed below and sang very softly so as not to disturb the sleeping street; a few hymns and finally the majestic strains of “The Dying Christian” floated up. Mrs. Murray had complained of feeling tired. “I think I’ll just lie a moment on your bed, Angela, until your father comes up.” But her daughter noticed that she had not relaxed, instead she was straining forward a little and Angela realized that she was trying to catch every note of her husband’s virile, hearty voice.
She said, “You heard what we were all talking about before the boys left. You and father don’t ever bother to discuss such matters, do you?”
Her mother seemed to strain past the sound of her voice. “Not any more; oh,
