CHAPTER XI
THE PORTER'S STORY
From the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping carhad attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps bestdescribes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirtyyears of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something whichmanifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunatestress of circumstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He wasa blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certaindignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practicalcertainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood hadcome in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of theAnglo-Saxon.
He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down toAfrica, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of themonasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsula en route,--butcertainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man,could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that thisbig blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under toosinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which mightbe told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps mostinterestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to bethe psychological moment.
"Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said--he had learned theporter's name the day before, but half hesitated at thefamiliarity--"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of therest of us. Will you let us know what it is?"
The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. Itcould be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing humanbeing and he rose to the occasion.
"I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save aspossibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, butit may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come tothink of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell my storyto intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm goingto tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdictcannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but thisis the story:
HIS PROBLEM
Is it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what Iam?
Some time ago I read an exceedingly clever poem in some magazine,describing the sufferings of Pierrot, that inimitable and fascinatingFrench modification of Harlequin, ever vainly seeking his elusiveColumbine.
"I, who am Pierrot, pity me! Oh pity me!" he cries in his helplessdesire for sympathy. Sometimes I feel like Pierrot, though my sufferingis not as his.
I hesitate, somehow, at telling my own story lest I be misunderstood oroffend in some manner. I have some courage and I'm not asking sympathyin any weak or maudlin way. I am but stating a case, a case with aproblem attached and one which I have, so far, been unable to solve,though the quality of my life must depend upon the nature of thesolution. I am neither whining nor begging. The story may or may notpossess a degree of interest. I wish I could tell it better.
I am thirty-four years of age, and I think I can fairly say, am welleducated; so thorough was my college course and so diligently did Iapply myself, that I excel most graduates in the extent of my realacquirements. I have forgotten neither my classics nor my mathematicsand I read and speak French and German fluently. I keep myself familiarwith what occurs in the field of literature. I chance to have aretentive memory and my perceptions are, it seems to me, at leastreasonably keen.
I am six feet in height and, absurd as it may seem in me to say it, am awell formed, well set up man. I have clean cut features, rather aquilinethan otherwise, grey eyes, light hair, which curls slightly, and a faircomplexion. I am an athlete, trained from boyhood, and have bornemyself, I hope, as a man should in encounters in the southwest, wherebrawn has for the moment counted for more than brains. I describe myselfthus directly, but not conceitedly, because I want to be known as yousee me, for just what I am. To discredit myself unjustly in the least,to tell less than the truth, would mar the justice of the premises uponwhich I make my case and from which I make clear, or at least try tomake clear, the nature of the problem which has proved too difficult forme.
I have had ambitions, hopes and love. I have known men and women. I havebecome familiar with the affairs of the world. I am naturally of abuoyant and hopeful disposition and yet I, a strong man, am to-dayperplexed, sad, almost hopeless. I have no incumbrances. A healthy,educated man of thirty-four, with no burden of the ordinary sort, andyet disheartened! I can imagine you saying, with an inflection of eitherpity or contempt. Well, what I have told of myself is the truth and Imust take the consequences.
I was born in one of the southern states. One of my grandfathers was aman of standing, and one of my grandmothers was, I am told, a verybeautiful woman. My father was also a man of note, a distinguishedofficer in the civil war who did well in battle. My mother was a womanof exceptional charms of person and character, but died when I was amere child. I was educated by a wealthy brother of my father, whochanced to take an interest in me. Until the age of twelve I was thealmost constant companion of his own son.
At the age of twelve, my cousin and I who had been so much together wereseparated, he going to a school in one of the great cities, I to one ina smaller town. After graduation at school we were each sent to college.My cousin went to one of the great universities and I was sent to one ofthe smaller colleges of the country, but one where the curriculum wasextensive and the requirements severe. I studied hard and graduated inthe same year with my cousin. We met again at the old homestead and Ifound that, because of my close attention to my studies, perhaps, too,because of a somewhat quicker apprehension, I excelled him decidedly inacquirements. We passed a not unpleasant month together, hunting andfishing in the old way, but, somehow, it was not the same as it had beenwhen we were boys together. I noticed a change in my cousin's demeanortoward me. His manner was not unkindly, for he is one of the best andmost generous of men, but there was a certain change, a certain distanceof air which made it plain to me that we could never again be to eachother what we had been as boys in the past. We separated each to go outinto the world to struggle for himself; I, alone; he, with theinfluential family and a host of influential friends behind him. I havenever seen him since.
Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be toadopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it,but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital whichmight enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without muchdifficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a courseof three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thusobtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studieddiligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I wasclerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but thedistinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to saythat I was the most thorough student he had ever assisted and prophesiedflatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with complimentsfrom the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at onceestablished an office in a town of about two thousand people, where theoutlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in thelittle city, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. Iknew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries,possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men toan exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them importantones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as apublic speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform orpolitical rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. Myfuture seemed assured. I found friends among the best people, my incomewas more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was accumulatingbooks of the world's literature. My law library was the best in thecounty. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright tome.
One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a yo
ungman who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did whatI could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperamentand tastes, and his associates and friends had all been different frommine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed asurprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longerreceived invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings. No reason wasgiven me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by myformer friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as muchimportance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed theirlegal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only anoccasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me alivelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions Igave up. I closed my office and left the city.
It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hopedto become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.
I drifted east and found myself in Boston. There I met two young men,seniors in college, but poor, who had engaged themselves as men of allwork--partly as a midsummer lark, but chiefly for the money to begained--to work in a great summer hotel in the mountains. A third manwas needed, and they asked me if I would not go with them. I was readyfor anything, and accepted the invitation.
The hotel was one of the largest in the mountains, and the numerousguests included wealthy and distinguished families from all parts of thecountry. That we were college-bred men and had students' ambitions alsobecame known, and it came to pass, at last, that our duties for the dayaccomplished, we appeared in evening dress, and joined in the evening'samusements, laughed at in a friendly way, and jesting ourselves inreturn.
I cannot go into further details of the happenings of that summer at themountain resort, where all was healthy and healthful except my ownmentality, which had been made what it was by conditions over which Ihad no control. I prayed, and prayer, while it strengthened me, did nothelp me bow to the injustice under which I suffered. I thought and triedto find what a logical brain, a broad view of things, and a keenintelligence might do, and that did not help me. Ever, ever came thesame inevitable deduction. I was a hunted wretch, pursued by a socialand partly natural law, driven ever into a cul de sac, into a side gorgein the mountains of life, a short gorge with precipitous walls on eitherside and ending suddenly and briefly in a wall as perpendicular and highand smooth. True, I had for the moment escaped, for the instant I wasfree, but I knew that soon, inevitably, the cordon would hem me in andthat I would be at the mercy of the pursuers--the unmalicious butinstinctively impelled pursuers. Then came a respite from the torturingthought, a forgetfulness for the moment, a forgetfulness to be paid for.
I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conductedindividuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spotsof the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewdcapitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I metall, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet,knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good onesmade me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little childrenleaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman whothought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go outalone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. Therewas one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was oneamong those--may the good God ever have her in his keeping--who, from nothought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happinessand also such sorrow as few men know.
Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thoughtdeep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I heldcommunion on lake and shore in that enchanted summer with the woman whoheld my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfullyguilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. Idrifted and drifted. I cannot analyze my own feelings at the time. Iknew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, eventhen, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into achurch and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.
Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky itdisappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds partslowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leavingblackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things,and then came silence. There was only the information that one fairguest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.
Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor,principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am awanderer. What am I to do? I am a man without a country as much as waspoor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan,I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without acountry because my country will not give me what it gives to other men.I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects meand with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing incommon. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me byinches.
I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some Africanchieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors?I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying lawof God and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of thedifferent races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. Anegro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is tome as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All mythoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, tosympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have himhelp me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am awhite man. But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pityme, oh pity me."
As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all thestory. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way Ihave traveled.
Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freighttrain on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, namedme Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing atmy pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a bookin my hand.
One day, while we were waiting on a siding near a small station, a tramprecognized me. He was a man I had defended in court for some smalloffense, in the distant western town where I practiced law. I had himkept out of jail by my pleading. I had believed that his arrest andtrial would be a lesson such as would keep him from the idle and viciousways he was just beginning to follow at that time.
The tramp rode a few miles on our train. After that the train crewceased to consort with me. They looked sullenly upon me and mutteredamong themselves when I came near them. The engineer looked the otherway when he had to speak to me. His face was grim and sad, as well, buthe looked the other way. There was no outbreak, but I could not enduremy position. I left the railroad work as soon as our train arrived inthe city where the company made its headquarters.
Once again, some years after the railway episode, I thought to work on astreet-car line. I applied for the position of motorman, and was wellreceived by the superintendent to whom I reported after he had in replyto my letter, asked me to call at his office. I gave, at his request,the names of a half a dozen responsible men as references as to mycharacter and responsibility. I arranged with a security company forgiving the required bond, and was told that as soon as favorable answerswere received from my friends I would be put to practice work; I feltassured of a position, laborious and nerve testing, it is true, butrespectable and reasonable well paid.
After two weeks I called upon the superintendent again, although he hadnot written, as he promised to do, after hearing from the men I hadreferred him to.
He was a hard man of business, that superintendent, but he spoke to mekindly, regretfully, almost shamefacedly. The testimonials to mycharacter and life were, he said, very flattering to me. No one had saidanything but good of me. But it would never do, he explained, for me tobe set to work on the r
oad. The men would be sure to find out the truthabout me, sooner or later, and then the officials of the road would beblamed. There was sure to be trouble. Personally, the superintendenthad, he said, no "race prejudices," but he could not answer for thefeelings of others less free from the influence of tradition and naturalaversion.
I stood silent while the man of my own race calmly, even tenderly, wavedme back into the ranks of a people of whose blood a few drops only runin my veins. So another gate was closed. So I was once more forced intothe narrow bounds of an invisible prison.
My mother had one-sixteenth of negro blood in her veins and was a slave.Now what explains my most unfortunate condition? Is it because thisancestor had this trace of the blood of another race, and that I haveone thirty-second part of the same blood, though I chance to be whiterthan most Caucasians? Well, God made the races. Is it because thisancestor was a slave? So were the Britons slaves of the Romans. Myfather was a descendant of some slave. He is not responsible for thechase of his mother in ancient woods and for her capture by some fierceavaricious Roman legionary who knew the value of a breeder of sturdyTeutonic brawn in making Roman highways. It was through no fault of minethat the Arab trader chased my great-great-great-grandmother orgrandfather down in the jungle and sold her to the sallow-faced slavedealer who brought her to America. The blood of my father's ancestorsbecame intermixed with that of the captors. My father's race becamefree. So has mine. The difference is but in time. Why is it, then, thatI am as I am? I do not want to become a barber, nor a porter, nor anattendant in a Turkish bath, nor to serve other men. I do not want towork upon the streets, though I am not afraid of manual labor nor do Icount it dishonorable. But I am a cultivated man, a man skilled in aprofession where intelligence and training are required, a man of moralcharacter and refined tastes. I am starving for the companionship of myown kind. Brain and heart, I am starving. What am I to do?
Pity me, good people, Oh, pity me!