Helen’s curiosity was aroused and although she didn’t like the idea of sitting among a lot of mill hands, she was anxious to see and hear this reputedly brilliant young man from the great metropolis where not long before she had lost both her provincialism and chastity.
“Oh, all right,” she assented with mock reluctance. “I’ll go.”
The Knights of Nordica’s flag-draped auditorium slowly filled. It was a bare, cavernous structure, with sawdust on the floor, a big platform at one end, row after row of folding wooden chairs and illuminated by large, white lights hanging from the rafters. On the platform was a row of five chairs, the center one being high-backed and gilded. On the lectern downstage was a bulky bible. A huge American flag was stretched across the rear wall.
The audience was composed of the lower stratum of white working people: hard-faced, lantern-jawed, dull-eyed adult children, seeking like all humanity for something permanent in the eternal flux of life. The young girls in their cheap finery with circus makeup on their faces; the young men, aged before their time by child labor and a violent environment; the middle-aged folk with their shiny, shabby garb and beaten countenances; all ready and eager to be organized for any purpose except improvement of their intellects and standard of living.
Rev. Givens opened the meeting with a prayer “for the success, O God, of this thy work, to protect the sisters and wives and daughters of these, thy people, from the filthy pollution of an alien race.”
A choir of assorted types of individuals sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” earnestly, vociferously and badly.
They were about to file off the platform when the song leader, a big, beefy, jovial mountain of a man, leaped upon the stage and restrained them.
“Wait a minute, folks, wait a minute,” he commanded. Then turning to the assemblage: “Now people let’s put some pep into this. We wanna all be happy and get in th’ right spirit for this heah meetin’. Ah’m gonna ask the choir to sing th’ first and last verses ovah ag’in, and when they come to th’ chorus, Ah wantcha to all join in. Doan be ’fraid. Jesus wouldn’t be ’fraid to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ now would he? Come on, then. All right, choir, you staht; an’ when Ah wave mah han’ you’all join in on that theah chorus.”
They obediently followed his directions while he marched up and down the platform, red-faced and roaring and waving his arms in time. When the last note had died away, he dismissed the choir and stepping to the edge of the stage he leaned far out over the audience and barked at them again.
“Come on, now, folks! Yuh caint slow up on Jesus now. He won’t be satisfied with jus’ one ole measly song. Yuh gotta let ’im know that yuh love ’im; that y’re happy an’ contented; that yuh ain’t got no troubles an’ ain’t gonna have any. Come on, now. Le’s sing that ole favorite what yo’all like so well: ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.’ ” He bellowed and they followed him. Again the vast hall shook with sound. He made them rise and grasp each other by the hand until the song ended.
Matthew, who sat on the platform alongside old man Givens viewed the spectacle with amusement mingled with amazement. He was amused because of the similarity of this meeting to the religious orgies of the more ignorant Negroes and amazed that earlier in the evening he should have felt any qualms about lecturing to these folks on anthropology, a subject with which neither he nor his hearers were acquainted. He quickly saw that these people would believe anything that was shouted at them loudly and convincingly enough. He knew what would fetch their applause and bring in their memberships and he intended to repeat it over and over.
The Imperial Grand Wizard spent a half-hour introducing the speaker of the evening, dwelt upon his supposed scholastic attainments, but took pains to inform them that, despite Matthew’s vast knowledge, he still believed in the Word of God, the sanctity of womanhood and the purity of the white race.
For an hour Matthew told them at the top of his voice what they believed: i.e., that a white skin was a sure indication of the possession of superior intellectual and moral qualities; that all Negroes were inferior to them; that God had intended for the United States to be a white man’s country and that with His help they could keep it so; that their sons and brothers might inadvertently marry Negresses or, worse, their sisters and daughters might marry Negroes, if Black-No-More, Incorporated, was permitted to continue its dangerous activities.
For an hour he spoke, interrupted at intervals by enthusiastic gales of applause, and as he spoke his eye wandered over the females in the audience, noting the comeliest ones. As he wound up with a spirited appeal for eager soldiers to join the Knights of Nordica at five dollars per head and the half-dozen “planted” emissaries led the march of suckers to the platform, he noted for the first time a girl who sat in the front row and gazed up at him raptly.
She was a titian blonde, well-dressed, beautiful and strangely familiar. As he retired amid thunderous applause to make way for Rev. Givens and the money collectors, he wondered where he had seen her before. He studied her from his seat.
Suddenly he knew. It was she! The girl who had spurned him; the girl he had sought so long; the girl he wanted more than anything in the world! Strange that she should be here. He had always thought of her as a refined, educated and wealthy lady, far above associating with such people as these.
