“Are you walking?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Cresswell, and then in a moment it flashed upon her. She took the woman’s arm and walked with her. Suddenly she stopped.
“Where’s—Nell’s?”
The woman frowned. “Oh, that’s a swell place,” she said. “Senators and millionaires. Too high for us to fly.”
Mrs. Cresswell winced. “But where is it?” she asked.
“We’ll walk by it if you want to.”
And Mary Cresswell walked in another world. Up from the ground of the drowsy city rose pale gray forms; pale, flushed, and brilliant, in silken rags. Up and down they passed, to and fro, looking and gliding like sheeted ghosts; now dodging policemen, now accosting them familiarly.
“Hello, Elise,” growled one big bluecoat.
“Hello, Jack.”
“What’s this?” and he peered at Mrs. Cresswell, who shrank back.
“Friend of mine. All right.”
A horror crept over Mary Cresswell: where had she lived that she had seen so little before? What was Washington, and what was this fine, tall, quiet residence? Was this—“Nell’s”?
“Yes, this is it—goodbye—I must—”
“Wait—what is your name?”
“I haven’t any name,” answered the woman suspiciously.
“Well—pardon me! Here!” and she thrust a bill into the woman’s hand.
The girl stared. “Well, you’re a queer one! Thanks. Guess I’ll turn in.”
Mary Cresswell turned to see her husband and his companions ascending the steps of the quiet mansion. She stood uncertainly and looked at the opening and closing door. Then a policeman came by and looked at her.
“Come, move on,” he brusquely ordered. Her vacillation promptly vanished, and she resolutely mounted the steps. She put out her hand to ring, but the door flew silently open and a manservant stood looking at her.
“I have some friends here,” she said, speaking coarsely.
“You will have to be introduced,” said the man. She hesitated and started to turn away. Thrusting her hand in her pocket it closed upon her husband’s card-case. She presented a card. It worked a rapid transformation in the servant’s manner, which did not escape her.
“Come in,” he invited her.
She did not stop at the outstretched arm of the cloakman, but glided quickly up the stairs toward a vision of handsome women and strains of music. Harry Cresswell was sitting opposite and bending over an impudent blue-and-blonde beauty. Mary slipped straight across to him and leaned across the table. The hat fell off, but she let it go.
“Harry!” she tried to say as he looked up.
Then the table swayed gently to and fro; the room bowed and whirled about; the voices grew fainter and fainter—all the world receded suddenly far away. She extended her hands languidly, then, feeling so utterly tired, let her eyelids drop and fell asleep.
She awoke with a start, in her own bed. She was physically exhausted but her mind was clear. She must go down and meet him at breakfast and talk frankly with him. She would let bygones be bygones. She would explain that she had followed him to save him, not to betray him. She would point out the greater career before him if only he would be a man; she would show him that they had not failed. For herself she asked nothing, only his word, his confidence, his promise to try.
After his first start of surprise at seeing her at the table, Cresswell uttered nothing immediately save the commonplaces of greeting. He mentioned one or two bits of news from the paper, upon which she commented while dawdling over her egg. When the servant went out and closed the door, she paused a moment considering whether to open by appeal or explanation. His smooth tones startled her:
“Of course, after your art exhibit and the scene of last night, Mary, it will be impossible for us to live longer together.”
She stared at him, utterly aghast—voiceless and numb.
“I have seen the crisis approaching for some time, and the Negro business settles it,” he continued. “I have now decided to send you to my home in Alabama, to my father or your brother. I am sure you will be happier there.”
He rose. Bowing courteously, he waited, coldly and calmly, for her to go.
All at once she hated him and hated his aristocratic repression; this cold calm that hid hell and its fires. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and said in a voice hoarse with horror and loathing:
“You brute! You nasty brute!”
XXXII
Zora’s Way
Zora was looking on her world with the keener vision of one who, blind from very seeing, closes the eyes a space and looks again with wider clearer vision. Out of a nebulous cloudland she seemed to step; a land where all things floated in strange confusion, but where one thing stood steadfast, and that was love. When love was shaken all things moved, but now, at last, for the first time she seemed to know the real and mighty world that stood behind that old and shaken dream.
So she looked on the world about her with new eyes. These men and women of her childhood had hitherto walked by her like shadows; today they lived for her in flesh and blood. She saw hundreds and thousands of black men and women: crushed, half-spirited, and blind. She saw how high and clear a light Sarah Smith, for thirty years and more, had carried before them. She saw, too, how that the light had not simply shone in darkness, but had lighted answering beacons here and there in these dull souls.
There were thoughts and vague stirrings of unrest in this mass of black folk. They talked long about their firesides, and here Zora began to sit and listen, often speaking a word herself. All through the countryside she flitted, till gradually the black folk came to know her and, in silent deference to some subtle difference, they gave her the title of white folk, calling her “Miss” Zora.
Today, more than ever before, Zora sensed the vast unorganized power in this mass, and her mind was leaping here and there, scheming and testing, when voices arrested her.
It was
