“Oh, but I can,” and in a moment Angela had rushed to the telephone forgetting everything except that her father was in his shop today and therefore almost within reach and so was the car.
Not long after he came striding into the hospital, tall and black and rather shabby in his working clothes. He was greeted by the clerk with a rather hostile, “Yes, and what do you want?”
Angela, hastening across the lobby to him, halted at the intonation.
Junius was equal to the moment’s demands. “I’m Mrs. Murray’s chauffeur,” he announced, hating the deception, but he would not have his wife bundled out too soon. “Is she very badly off, Miss Angela?”
His daughter hastened to reassure him. “No, she’ll be down in a few minutes now.”
“And meanwhile you can wait outside,” said the attendant icily. She did not believe that black people were exactly human; there was no place for them in the scheme of life so far as she could see.
Junius withdrew, and in a half hour’s time the young intern and the nurse came out supporting his wan wife. He sprang to the pavement: “Lean on me, Mrs. Murray.”
But sobbing, she threw her arms about his neck. “Oh Junius, Junius!”
He lifted her then, drew back for Angela and mounting himself, drove away. The intern stepped back into the hospital raging about these damn white women and their nigger servants. Such women ought to be placed in a psychopathic ward and the niggers burned.
The girls got Mrs. Murray into the Morris chair and ran upstairs for pillows and wraps. When they returned Junius was in the chair and Mrs. Murray in his arms. “Oh, June, dear June, such a service of love.”
“Do you suppose she’s going to die?” whispered Jinny, stricken. What, she wondered, would become of her father.
But in a few days Mattie was fully recovered and more happy than ever in the reflorescence of love and tenderness which had sprung up between herself and Junius. Only Junius was not so well. He had had a slight touch of grippe during the winter and the half hour’s loitering in the treacherous March weather, before the hospital, had not served to improve it. He was hoarse and feverish, though this he did not immediately admit. But a tearing pain in his chest compelled him one morning to suggest the doctor. In a panic Mattie sent for him. Junius really ill! She had never seen him in anything but the pink of condition. The doctor reluctantly admitted pneumonia—“a severe case but I think we can pull him through.”
He suffered terribly—Mattie suffered with him, never leaving his bedside. On the fifth day he was delirious. His wife thought, “Surely God isn’t going to let him die without speaking to me again.”
Toward evening he opened his eyes and saw her tender, stricken face. He smiled. “Dear Mattie,” and then, “Jinny, I’d like to hear some music, ‘Vital Spark’—”
So his daughter went down to the little parlour and played and sang “The Dying Christian.”
Angela thought, “Oh, isn’t this terrible! Oh how can she?” Presently she called softly, “Jinny, Jinny come up.”
Junius’ hand was groping for Mattie’s. She placed it in his. “Dear Mattie,” he said, “Heaven opens on my eyes—”
The house was still with the awful stillness that follows a funeral. All the bustle and hurry were over; the end, the fulfilment toward which the family had been striving for the last three days was accomplished. The baked funeral meats had been removed; Virginia had seen to that. Angela was up in her room, staring dry-eyed before her; she loved her father, but not even for him could she endure this aching, formless pain of bereavement. She kept saying to herself fiercely: “I must get over this, I can’t stand this. I’ll go away.”
Mrs. Murray sat in the old Morris chair in the dining-room. She stroked its arms with her plump, worn fingers; she laid her face again and again on its shabby back. One knew that she was remembering a dark, loved cheek. Jinny said, “Come upstairs and let me put you to bed, darling. You’re going to sleep with me, you know. You’re going to comfort your little girl, aren’t you, Mummy?” Then as there was no response, “Darling, you’ll make yourself ill.”
Her mother sat up suddenly. “Yes, that’s what I want to do. Oh, Jinny, do you think I can make myself ill enough to follow him soon? My daughter, try to forgive me, but I must go to him. I can’t live without him. I don’t deserve a daughter like you, but—don’t let them hold me back. I want to die, I must die. Say you forgive me—”
“Darling,” and it was as though her husband rather than her daughter spoke, “whatever you want is what I want.” By a supreme effort she held back her tears, but it was years before she forgot the picture of her mother sitting back in the old Morris chair, composing herself for death.
VI
At the Academy matters progressed smoothly without the flawing of a ripple. Angela looked forward to the hours which she spent there and honestly regretted their passage. Her fellow students and the instructors were more than cordial, there was an actual sense of camaraderie among them. She had not mentioned the fact of her Negro strain, indeed she had no occasion to, but she did not believe that this fact if known would cause any change in attitude. Artists were noted for their broad-mindedness. They were the first persons in the world to
