Even if this had been all—a pretty girl on that gaunt empty street at this solitary hour, the staring would have been pardonable. But there was in addition an especially extenuating circumstance: the girl was not white.
Before she quite passed beyond earshot Jinx and Bubber were indulging in low enthusiasms:
“Boy, do you see what I see?”
“Law‑a‑aw‑dy!”
“Mus’ be havin’ a recess in heaven!”
“No lie. Umh-umh-umh—” Grunts to signify admiration far beyond words.
“Lady, you kin have all my week’s pay—ev’y bit of it.” Bubber dived elaborately into his empty pockets, while Jinx vowed:
“I’m go’n’ get religion and die so I kin go to heaven and meet that angel—yassuh!”
Suddenly comment ceased. Only two doors beyond Merrit’s house the girl turned in, traversed the short cement walk, mounted the stoop, unlocked and entered the front door.
Merrit raised his brows in a characteristic little expression of surprise. Shine saw him do so and had a swift interpretation for that expression:
“Figgerin’ on a jive already—the doggone dickty hound. Why the hell dickties can’t stick to their own women ’thout messin’ around honest workin’ girls—”
Bubber was rapturizing without restraint, “Man—oh—man! A honey with high yaller laigs! And did you see that walk? That gal walks on ball-bearin’s, she do—ev’rything moves at once.” He illustrated his idea with head-wobblings, shoulder-rollings, and loose backward protrusions and retractions of buttocks. “See what I mean? Tail-conscious, man, tail-conscious—”
“You jes’ a damn liar,” came unexpectedly from Shine. “She walks like what she is, a lady—and you talk like what you is, a rat. Come on, it’s gettin’ late—let’s go from here.”
Whereupon Jinx looked at Bubber and Bubber looked at Jinx. Here was indeed something new, Shine championing a woman.
“Well, kiss my assorted peanuts!” ejaculated Bubber.
“Guess that’s the dynamite,” was Jinx’s dyspeptic surmise.
Uplift
VI
Miss Agatha Cramp had, among other things, a sufficiently large store of wealth and a sufficiently small store of imagination to want to devote her entire life to Service; in fact, to Social Service on a large scale. And because Miss Cramp took very personal interest in her successive servants, it came about that this Social Service was directed towards definite racial groups. When her maid had been French, Miss Cramp had organized a club to assist rebuilding demolished French villages; when her maid had been Polish, she had taken up with a Society for the Aid of Starving Poland; and shortly after hiring a Russian girl, she became a member of the Russian Relief Committee.
Thus Miss Cramp had devoted the more recent years of her life to Service, and now, with a colored maid on hand, she had no outlet for her urge. For two weeks she had been idle, and idleness drove her to distraction. She felt worse and worse day by day, until at last her doctor said what she paid him to say: that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and would simply have to go to bed and rest.
She rested three days; whereupon an ironic Court Avenue sun revealed to her something of which she had hitherto been unaware: her colored maid, bringing in her breakfast, looked somehow amazingly pretty. And although Miss Cramp had no very generous eye for beauty, she was so struck by the discovery of what hitherto had mysteriously escaped her that she was moved to exclaim:
“Why, Linda, what’ve you done to yourself? You look so nice this morning.”
Linda stood stiff in astonishment, eventually managing what might have been construed as a reply:
“You—feeling better, Miss Cramp?” The twinkle in the maid’s eye escaped her mistress.
“I believe I am, Linda. I really believe I am.” Miss Cramp stared at the girl a while, then turned her attention to the tray just placed on her lap; inspected it, looked through it absently.
“Something else, Miss Cramp?” asked Linda.
“No. This is very nice, Linda. Very nice. But don’t go. I want to talk to you. Something has just occurred to me.”
It had indeed. For fifteen years Miss Cramp had been devoting her life to the service of mankind. Not until now had the startling possibility occurred to her that Negroes might be mankind, too.
The bare statement is extravagant; the fact is not. The only Negroes Miss Cramp had ever spoken to were porters, waiters, and house-servants of acquaintances. These were the only ones of whose existence she had been even remotely aware. Negroes to her had been rather ugly but serviceable fixtures, devices that happened to be alive, dull instruments of drudgery, so observed, so accepted, so used, and so forgotten. Had all the dark-skinned folk in the country been blotted out by some specific selective destruction, Miss Cramp would not have missed them in the least, would not have been glad nor sorry, would have gone serenely on unaware, tchk-tchk-ing perhaps over the newspaper account, but remaining wholly untouched in her sympathies.
Not so with remoter disasters: Over the slaughter of Armenians by Turks she had once sobbed bitterly and even over the devastation of the Japanese by earthquake she had mourned a little; because, though she had never known Armenian or Japanese, she had thought somewhat about them; though they had never approached her person, they had penetrated her intellect a little. But Negroes she had always accepted with horses, mules, and motors, and though they had brushed her shoulder, they had never actually entered her head.
But now something had occurred to her.
“Linda you’re quite different from most—er—colored people, aren’t you?”
To Linda, who had no idea what “most colored people” might mean, this was a baffling question.
“I don’t know, Miss Cramp,” she said.
“I mean—you know—you’re—I hadn’t noticed before. You’re really quite pretty.” She was experiencing the difficulties familiar to all who itch with curiosity but prefer not to be seen scratching. “You’re so light, you know.”
Linda’s lips twitched. “Why I’m not so awfully light, Miss Cramp. And plenty folks lighter than I am are far from being pretty.”
“Yes—of course,” Miss Cramp considered. “Even white people. To be sure. But of
