“Bob, do you really believe what you said just now about most of them really believing Negroes will be scared by the Klan? That seems so far-fetched.”
“Believe it? Of course I do. Just use your eyes and see how Negroes fool white folks all the time. Take, for instance, old Will Hutchinson who works for Mr. Baird. Will cuts all sorts of monkey-shines around Baird, laughs like an idiot, and wheedles old Baird out of anything he’s got. Baird gives it to him and then tells his friends about ‘his good nigger Will’ and boasts that Will is one ‘darky’ he really knows. Then Will goes home and laughs at the fool he’s made of Baird by acting like a fool.” Bob laughed at the memory of many occasions on which Will had bamboozled his employer. “And there are Negroes all over the South doing the same thing every day!” he ended.
“That’s true,” admitted Kenneth, “but what ought we to do about this meeting last night?”
“Do?” echoed Bob. A determined look came to his face, his teeth clenched, his eyes narrowed until they became thin slits. “Do?” he repeated. “If they ever bother me, I’m going to fight—and fight like hell!”
Long into the night Kenneth sat alone in his office, wondering how it was all going to turn out.
X
The next day Kenneth received a letter from Jane Phillips. In it she announced that she would arrive in Central City on Monday morning.
Kenneth’s face took on a satisfied smile and deep down in his heart there was happiness and contentment. Jane had occupied an increasingly large portion of his thoughts ever since those wonderful ten days they had spent together last December. Kenneth’s life had been singularly free from feminine influence, other than that of his mother. It was not that he was averse to such influence, but his life had been so busy that he had had no time to spend in wandering through the Elysian fields of lovemaking. There had been one girl in New York. He had met her at a dance in Harlem. Together they had spent their Sundays and the evenings when he was free from his duties at the hospital in wandering through Central and Bronx Parks. Occasionally they had attended the theatre. One night their hands had touched as they sat in the semidarkness and watched the tender love scene on the stage. She had not withdrawn her hand. He sat there thrilled at the touch and had lived the character of the make-believe hero as he made ardent love on the stage. Naturally, the heroine was none other than the girl who sat beside him. Afterwards, they had ridden home atop a Fifth Avenue bus, and the whole city seemed filled with romance. He had imagined himself at the time deeply in love. But that tender episode had soon ended when he told her he was planning to return to Georgia. “Kenneth!” she had exclaimed. “How can you think of living down South again? It’s silly of you even to think of it! I could never think of living down there where they are likely to lynch you at a moment’s notice! It’s too barbaric, too horrible an existence to consider even for a minute!” Kenneth had tried to show her that it wasn’t as bad as it had been painted, that coloured people who minded their own business never had any trouble. But she had been obdurate. Kenneth left the house in a huff, and had never gone back again. What silly notions women have, he had thought to himself. The reason they talked about the South that way was because of sheer ignorance. As if he couldn’t manage his own affairs and keep away from trouble! Humph! Well rid of the silly creature, and he felt glad he had found out before going in too deep.
But now this was different. Jane had no such absurd notions as those girls up North had. She wasn’t the sort that couldn’t leave promenading down Seventh Avenue in New York or State Street in Chicago or U Street in Washington. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what it meant to live in the North. Hadn’t she been to Atlantic City and New York and Washington with her mother? No, Jane was just the sort of girl who would make the right sort of companion for him in a place like Central City. Intelligent, with a good education, talented musically—she would make an ideal wife. Kenneth found himself musing along in this fashion until aroused by his mother as she called him to supper.
It was darned silly of him, he thought as he arose to comply, to go along thinking like this. He and Jane had spoken no word of love when she had been at home at Christmas. Nor had their letters been other than those of good friends. But hadn’t she written him almost every week since she left? She must think something of him to have done that. He determined that as soon as he could he would skilfully direct the conversation to the point where he could find out just where he stood. It was time that he was thinking about settling down, anyhow. He would be twenty-nine his next birthday—he was making money—if he acted wisely his future was assured. Yes, he would find out how Jane felt. Both his mother and Mamie liked Jane—and Mr. Phillips had called him “my boy” several times lately and had repeated to him snatches of the letters that Jane had written home. The only doubtful quantity was the attitude of Jane herself.
On Monday morning Kenneth reached the railroad station long before the train arrived. He tried to sit in the filthy little waiting-room with the sign over the door, “For Coloured,” but the air was so oppressive that
