His work finished for the day, he went as soon as he decently could to talk with Jane. She, too, had been at work. Eagerly they planned between them the infinite details of so ambitious a scheme. Confidently they discounted possible difficulties they might expect to encounter—the opposition of the whites who were profiting from the present system, the petty jealousies and suspicions of those who would gain most from the success of their scheme. They realized that the Negro had been robbed so much, both by his own people and by the whites, that he was chary of new plans and projects. They knew he was contentious and quarrelsome. These things seemed trivial, however, for with the natural expansiveness of the young they felt that difficulties like these were but trifles to be airily brushed aside.
Jane was not too much engrossed in their plans to notice the change in Kenneth’s manner. She had watched him closely during the times she had seen him since his return. He had been almost morose, his mind divided between his work and the effort to keep to a “middle-of-the-road” course in his relations with the whites. The inevitable conflict within himself, the lack of decisiveness in his daily life that he consciously developed and which was so diametrically opposite to that he used in his profession, had begun to create a complex personality that was far from pleasing. In a freer atmosphere Kenneth would have been a direct, straightforward character, swift to decision and quick of action. One cannot, however, compromise principle constantly and consciously without bearing the marks of such conflicts.
His compromises were not all conscious ones, though. He believed honestly it was wisest that he observe some sort of halfway ground between rank cowardice and uncompromising opposition to the conditions which existed. In doing so, he had no sense of physical or moral timidity. He knew no Negro could yet safely advocate complete freedom for the Negro in the South. He felt there had been improvement during the past half-century in those conditions. He believed that in time all of the Negro’s present problems would be solved satisfactorily. If, by not trying to rush things, he could help in that solution, he was content. In believing thus, Kenneth was different in no way from the majority of intelligent Negroes in the South: temporizing with the truth, it may be, yet of such temporizations and compromises is the life of the Negro all over the South.
With the evolving of a plan which enabled him to be of help and, at the same time, involved him in no danger of trouble with his white neighbours, Kenneth took on an eagerness which was at marked variance with his former manner. His eyes shone with the desire to make their plan a success. Of a tender and sympathetic nature, almost with the gentleness of a woman, he realized now that the burdens of his race had lain heavy upon him. He had suffered in their suffering, had felt almost as though he had been the victim when he read or heard of a lynching, had chafed under the bonds which bound the hands and feet and heart and soul of his people. But launched as he now was on a plan to furnish relief from one of the worst of those bonds, he had changed overnight into a determined and purposeful and ardent worker towards the goal he and Jane had set for themselves. Jane rejoiced at the changed air of Kenneth—he seemed to have emerged from the shell in which he had encased himself and, womanlike, she rejoiced that he had done so through her own work.
So absorbed had they been in discussion of their plans that the time had flown by as though on wings. Ten o’clock was announced by Mr. Phillips in the room above by the dropping of his shoes, one after the other, on the floor. Kenneth needed no second signal, he rose to go. Jane went to the door with him.
“Kenneth, you’re entirely different from the way you were yesterday. I’m so glad. …”
The next morning he called on Judge Stevenson. The Judge’s office was above the Bon Ton Store in a two-story brick building on Lee Street. Kenneth climbed the flight of dingy, dusty stairs which bore alternately on the vertical portions tin signs inscribed:
Richard P. Stevenson, Attorney-at-Law
and
Dr. J. C. Carpenter, Dentist.
The judge’s office was at the head of the stairs and in it Kenneth found the old lawyer seated near the window, his coat off, and in his mouth the long, thin, villainous-looking cigar without which few persons in Central City ever remembered seeing him, though none had ever seen one of them lighted. He chewed on it ruminatively when in repose. When engaged in an argument, either in or out of a courtroom, and especially when opposition caused his choleric temper to be aroused, he chewed furiously as though he would have enjoyed treating his enemy of the moment in similar fashion. He
