The Shadow

Mary White Ovington

The Shadow

EAN 8596547356172

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

I

THE PINES

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

II

KATHLEEN

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

III

DICK

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

IV

THE LIVE-OAKS

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

PROLOGUE

Table of Contents

When George Ogilvie, distinguished Judge of Palmetto County, Florida, read of the death in the papers—the quick death after the surgeon's knife—he felt glad and inexpressibly relieved. To play the part of avenger was sadly out of keeping with his gentle temperament. His wife could have done it without a qualm but since this was not permitted her she would in time have forced the role upon him. Fate, however, had taken her revenge without using him as her instrument, and the man who had brought disgrace into his home had slipped from the world honored by his associates, without visible taint upon his career. Remembering this, the Judge's sense of relief changed to a desire to play the familiar role, to sit himself upon the throne of justice and pronounce sentence upon this fresh-faced, laughing, persuasive criminal. Would he at the Most High Tribunal be given his full penalty?

But this autumn night, as the wind howled about the old house shaking the windows in their frames, as the rain tore the leaves from the branches and beat them upon the sodden ground, he almost wished the lad was alive again. He would then find some way to tie the loose, careless life to the life that it had maimed, to the life it had brought into existence. In this driving storm of circumstance that a week since had hurled a human being out of the world and last night had brought a second to take its place, he found himself helpless. His long career, a career in which he had decided with quiet assurance the guilt or innocence of men and women standing fearful before him, was of no assistance. This was not another man's problem but his own. He poured himself a drink from the old, ruby-glass decanter upon the sideboard, and found his hand trembling so that the liquor was spilled upon the cloth. His head swirled with the swirling leaves that the rain tore from their sockets. All that he had believed and preached was taken from him by his own world's tragic storm.

In the south room, however, it was peaceful and quiet. The wind spent its strength in the north, and here one could listen to the creak of the chair as the old nurse rocked slowly back and forth. Near her, on the bed, upon her back, was a young girl. Her curling brown hair lay a braid on either side of her delicate face. Her eyes were closed, but not in sleep, for every now and then she would move her right arm as though to draw something toward her. At length, opening her eyes, and looking to the far corner of the room, she said: Mammy, I want it.

The old colored woman left her seat and walked to where a cradle stood. Not right now, lil' lamb.

Why not?

It done sleep now.

The girl turned upon her side and, crooking her arm, rested her head within it. She listened, her brow slightly wrinkled, to the rain as it beat upon the roof of the gallery.

Presently: Why doesn't it cry, mammy?

Ain't I tole yer, chile, it done sleep. Ain't I tole yer?

Downstairs the man of the house had stepped across the hall and joined a little thin old gentleman who sat close to a blazing fire.

Doctor!

Yes, George.

Remember Lillias when you gave her to me, eighteen years ago?

What of it?

Nothing. How helpless she was. I reckon all baby things are helpless. In lowered voice: That baby upstairs now. It seems worse being a girl.

The doctor made no reply, but crouched by the fire.

It's up to us what their lives shall be, eh? Queen or beggar maid.

The man of the house looked forlornly at his silent visitor. Have a drink? he asked suddenly. I'll get you one. Julia fixed it mighty well getting the servants out of the way, but it don't make for hospitality.

Turning on him, the doctor raised his head and said, querulously: Stop talking, can't you, man, and think. What are you going to do?

What was he going to do? He, Judge Ogilvie, did not know what he was going to do. He looked helplessly into his friend's eyes.

Rising wearily the doctor went toward the door.

You aren't going? the man of the house cried in alarm.

Yes, for a little. I've other work to do.

See here, don't leave us like this! Supposing anything happens.

Nothing should happen; only remember she is very weak. I should fear a shock.

But what are we going to do?

Talk with your wife. The doctor spoke with a note of command. I'm not the one to say what you should do. He pulled on his coat and, turning, held out his hand to his friend. I'll be back soon, he said more gently. I'll be with you through the night.

Then he opened the door upon the howling wind and rain and was gone.

Judge Ogilvie walked back into the living-room to see his wife standing before the open fire.

She was a small woman, with a small, hard mouth. Usually it was firmly set, but to-night it trembled with her trembling chin. The judge noted that the old dress she wore, long discarded, was wet; that her hair lay damp against her forehead. Her hands, too, were wet, as she held them out to the flames.

Where's the doctor? she asked.

Gone, for a little.

And Lillias?

She has been quiet for some time. But you have been with her; you should know.

No, the woman answered, I have been acting for Lillias while you two have gaped and talked and risked her future with every hour. Something has been done.

Yes? The man of the house found his heart beating fast, but he put his question quietly, deliberately. You have had many plans. Which have you used?

I've hidden it; hidden her shame. It can never cross her path in this world.

What do you mean?

Oh, I've not committed murder. She clenched her trembling hands together. Not that it mightn't be the best thing. But it's buried, buried. You will never see it again.

Buried?

Buried from the world into which it was born. Hidden in the sure way that one in the South can hide. I did it myself, she went on in a whisper. I put some money in its dress and carried it in my arms that no one might know. I went through the alleys over the slippery road. The blacks' cabin was empty, and I hid it on the bed.

God! A white child! And you did this thing!

The man of the house for a moment faced his wife as judge.

Yes, she answered, looking full into his stern face. I left it there. And I was right, I was right! You wanted to do something to hide the disgrace. You said you did, you and the doctor both. But you talked and talked, and sat here by the fire. Well, something is done now. We've saved our daughter from disgrace. Let the baby begin an outcast. It's better than becoming one at eighteen.

Then of a sudden her strength left her, and she fell, sobbing, into a chair.

You'll tell her, George? she asked after a few moments. She will know it's for the best. But you are so quiet and gentle, and she must have no shock.

Yes, he answered slowly, she must have no shock, but she will mind very much. If she cries bitterly, may I bring it back?

No, no! His wife faced him in arms again. And then, more quietly, For her sake, no.

For her sake, he repeated to himself, and left the room.

As he walked up the stairs a great dog rose from where it lay in the hallway and, following, rubbed his nose in his master's hand.

Go back! he commanded as he reached the door of the south room. Likely you'll be a comfort later, but go back now.

He went to the side of the bed and found his daughter lying, her eyes wide open, looking out on the rain. He laid his hand gently upon her head and she drew it down and kissed it. She had always known that he would never fail her in his tender sympathy.

The baby has slept a long time, she whispered. Bring it to me, please.

He stooped and kissed her.

It's a little girl, and it looks like you. It does truly.

He stroked her forehead again, but did not speak.

She roused herself and turned her head toward the dark corner of the room. Bring it to me, mammy! she called.

The old woman walked to the cradle and made as though to lift a child from the blankets, but her arms were empty.

Bring it to me!

Lillias! her father was at her side where she sat erect staring at the cradle. Lillias, darling, your mother thought it best.

Bring it to me!

The old woman drew aside the blankets and showed an empty bed. Chile, she moaned, dis ain't my work.

There was a long silence; then the girl sank back in the sheets and turned toward the window. You might have let me kiss it good-by, she said.

Her back was to them both and again she laid her head in the crook of her arm. Her breath came softly, so very softly that what time it died away neither of the watchers knew.

But when her father again touched her forehead it was quite cold, and he felt as though another baby had been sent away to be hidden out in the rain.

I

Table of Contents

THE PINES

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

In the far south of the United States, where through the winter months the sun holds in warmth the blue encircling sky, opening the buds of the roses in December, where palmetto and white sand meet deep green swamp and heavily scented magnolia, there flows a great river. From its narrow source it deepens and widens until toward the end of its course it becomes an estuary, and for many miles dwellers on one side can dimly distinguish the contour of the opposite shore. The dwellers, as it happens, are not many, and the little boat that makes its daily trip to and from the busy city at the river's mouth is not overburdened with freight or passengers. It zigzags from shore to shore, stopping at one port for timber, at another to land an itinerant preacher, at a third to receive a fragrant load of oranges or grapefruit destined for a market in the north.

Merryvale is one of the oldest and most important of its stops. As long as the state has had a history there has been a Merryvale living on the river bank. In the days when the alligators climbed up the long wharf to sun themselves, and the moccasins dropped from the overhanging trees into the stream, the Merryvales owned thousands of acres at the water's edge and other thousands back in the pine forests. Then there was a Merryvale in Congress and another in the State Senate, while scores of slaves tilled the land and tended the cherished orange groves. But with the passing of time the alligators slipped from the wharf, the moccasins retreated to where gunshots were less frequent, and vast stretches of pines and of river-front passed into other hands.

Nevertheless, in the year 1910, when Lee Merryvale came back from college, there was astonishingly little apparent change in the old estate. To be sure, the timber had been depleted, acres of pines had been shipped down the river to some sawmill; and, worse, noble trees had been gashed in the trunks, their lifeblood drawn from them, drop by drop, and then left to decay and fall. But the hyacinth still choked the river near its bank where the gaunt cows waded in to chew the tough leaves, and the great house at the front among the live-oaks and the little cabins in the rear among the pines held descendants of old masters and old slaves and viewed life in much the timeworn way.

You approached Merryvale, of course, from the water; only the ignorant newcomer drove or motored the weary miles along the sandy road from the railway station. The true approach from the city was up the wide river for some three or four hours to the Merryvale landing. Here, disembarking with a friendly good-by from the captain, you walked down the long wharf, and, turning to the right, followed a narrow path in the white sand until you came out upon the great house.

Unchanged since the first Merryvale built it many decades ago, it stands a beautiful mansion of cool, high-ceilinged rooms and broad hallways. Across the front, which faces east, are spacious verandas or galleries that protect the rooms from the summer heat and afford pleasant places to sun oneself on chill winter days. The kitchen and sheds, screened by hardy bamboo, are in the rear; but at the front, before the house, as far as the bank at the river's edge, is a broad open expanse that in the North would be a lawn, but that here is sand dotted with tufts of grass and strewn with fallen leaves. For the glory of the open space is the live-oaks. These immense spreading trees stand well apart with huge roots that twist along the ground to disappear in the sand, there to send out other roots whose hungry mouths drink up the hidden moisture. The leaves are small, a dark rich green; but neither the leaves nor the great trunks attract your gaze; you are fascinated by the bunches of white, fibrous moss that hang from each bough. On a still day they are motionless, but the slightest breeze sends them softly waving, and in a storm they swing back and forth, the wind tearing through their long, thin strands, dragging off a bit here and a bit there, but in the end leaving them still companions of the live-oak. Birds use the moss for their nests, and probably no child in the Merryvale household has failed at some time to fashion of the soft fibres a long white beard with which to make the magic change from youth to venerated age. On either side of the house, extending in both directions, are orange groves, and back of the groves comes the second world, the world of the black folk.

As the world of the rulers has been among the live-oaks, so the world of the workers has been among the pines. Back of the great house you come to the clearing dotted with cabins that belong to the period before the war, rough affairs of hewn logs, well-ventilated by their many cracks. Whether of logs or the more modern clapboard, they are all set on supports away from the earth, and under their flooring hens with their chickens move about industriously scratching with their toes and penetrating the inhospitable-looking sand with their strong beaks. Occasionally a dog or a pig joins them and there is a general, but since they are all good friends, quite senseless cackle of dissent. Numberless weeds grow in the sand and flowers are about all the cabins; in the spring, violets and red lilies, in the summer, cosmos and zinnias, and the year through, red roses at the cabin doors.

Kindly monotony has been the keynote of Merryvale. To live on what you have, parting when necessary with a piece of timberland among the pines or a stretch of acres at the waterfront, this has been the history for many years at the great house. And monotony has triumphed, too, among the pines. After the war there were heart-throbbings and a sense of portentous changes; but when freedom had come and gone; when the Negro learned that he was still wholly dependent upon his old master, a liberated laborer but without the tools that made possible a new life, he turned to work again in his old surroundings at his familiar tasks. Industrious and ambitious colored fathers and mothers at Merryvale had been known to save enough to buy their homes; but their children, fed too by ambition, left them for the North. Thus Aunt Lucindy had a son who was head waiter in a hotel in Philadelphia, and Brother Jonathan's daughter made a thousand dollars a year teaching school in Washington. These depletions, so common in the country that pours her best stock into the city, held the settlement back. Altogether, the old place was full of pleasant, uneventful life touched with kindly decay.

And then Merryvale experienced a change. It came to black Merryvale first. In 1905 the colored school lacked a teacher and the colored Methodist church a preacher. These positions had been held by the same person who, to the lasting benefit of the community, was called to a wider field. Word came that the Church was sending a worthy and well-known brother who had filled a pulpit in a distant city, but whose failing health necessitated a change. With him was a daughter who would teach school. Then of an autumn evening the Williams family arrived and with them a multitude of envied possessions. Wealth entered the four-roomed cabin that was scrubbed with furious intensity before the white iron beds, the modern cooking-stove, the books—in all, a multitude of bewildering furnishings were placed within its walls. A period of whitewashing followed, of fencing in of chickens and garden, of trimming and pruning. It was as though some modern machine with its driving power, its whirring engine, had dropped into a medieval town.

Brother Williams was a feeble, kindly old man who preached but a short six months before death came and the Methodist church was again without a spiritual guide. After his death the preaching was by an itinerant, but by that time the church had lost its preëminent place in the community life. Salvation was taught indeed, but in a new guise and under a new roof, and the leader and prophet of the new gospel was the school teacher, Brother Williams' daughter Ellen.

Ellen Williams had been educated in one of the Negro colleges, founded shortly after the Civil War by northern philanthropy, and conducted by white women, and she had been filled with an unquenchable zeal to help her race. She went into this poor, remote country school with the zeal of the missionary to Africa; and if she was confronted by no wild beasts or savage chieftains she met with disheartening indifference, with envy and even with malice. But the true missionary burns with so pure a flame that she destroys in her bright fire the obstructions that are placed in her path. Moreover, she is made to rule and men and women obey, first critically, then enthusiastically, her decrees. There were mutterings at Ellen's demands. First the children must be washed beyond the strength and dignity of those who have to tote their every pail of water; then an unprecedented amount of needlework was needed to close up rents; and, last, they must forever give money, money that might go for whisky, for patent medicine, for the lodge or for the church, money needed to fill out the meager four months' salary by the county to the seven months demanded by the teacher as a minimum school year. Like all fanatics, Ellen saw one supreme duty—the bringing of education to the children of Merryvale. Other things, even preaching, might languish if this could be accomplished.

Ellen had her triumph at the end of seven months, when all the pupils of the school took part in the spring exhibition, from five-year-old Samantha Johnson who recited an evening hymn, to twenty-year-old Ebenezer, a half-witted youth and former laughing-stock, who displayed a beautifully woven basket that had already been sold for two dollars to some Rockefeller of the north, (and the school is to have one dollar of it for books, the teacher said emphatically). The Negro parent is ambitious for his children, he looks forward with unfaltering hope to the recognition of merit that shall come when his boy enters the world and acquits himself like a man. And though the recognition be never accorded, though to the average American the Negro who is not performing humble tasks is a cross between an impudent upstart and a nigger minstrel dude, the parent hopes on until death comes and his son, like himself, turns for his hope to his offspring. Ellen had builded on this firm foundation of parental ambition, and after the first year she received the coöperation of the people among whom she had come to give her life. A few evil spirits mocked, but they did not affect the success of the Merryvale school. And indeed marvels can be accomplished in a small community where, day and night, one may keep watch over one's charges, and where the county superintendent is too indifferent or too lazy to interfere with suggestion or criticism. So Ellen, a modern in educational methods, with the zealot's untiring energy, taught her children to keep clean and decent, to work steadily and to relate their study to their daily life. As they learned to write they indited letters to absent uncles and aunts, and (the teacher was judiciously blind to this) begged stamps from old Mr. Merryvale. They did number work, counting their chickens and multiplying their eggs with sober intentness. When readers grew scarce they got the discarded newspapers from the great house, and the older boys and girls began to watch the happenings in the outer world. They dug in the school garden and planted vegetables in gardens of their own. They even learned to cook and introduced new dishes into the limited regimen of their homes.

It would not have been possible for Ellen to have carried her school to the final triumph of the spring exhibition had she not been in touch with the college, as it was somewhat grandiosely called, at which she had received her education. Gifts of discarded blackboards, old but still useful maps, song-books, tools, many essentials to her undertaking, arrived at odd times on the river boat. Nor could she have kept always well and strong, neatly dressed and abundantly fed, had it not been for her mother's presence. Aunt Maggie, as Mrs. Williams was called, while not as energetic as her daughter was a capable woman who contributed her full part to the school's success. She earned more at laundry-work than Ellen could at teaching; and the two, by selling eggs and chickens and pork, by making jellies and candies for the hotel people four miles away whose laundry more than anything else kept them in funds, lived in decent comfort and put by for the future.

The second change that came to Merryvale dropped upon the great house. Five years after the Williams' advent, Lee Merryvale, only son of an only son, came back from college. He had made but two brief visits home since he had left to take up his freshman work, offering the expense of the trip as his excuse; and while his father missed him more with each year of slackened strength, he confessed that Lee made small demands upon his purse. He would write in affectionate and wondering solicitude that no land need slip from the estate to be converted into bank-checks, and would receive answer from his son that the college had given him a scholarship and that he worked in the summer months. It was wisest not to question but to wait until Lee returned to take up law, the traditional Merryvale profession.

With long explanations, with pacing up and down what remained of the old plantation, Lee Merryvale expounded to his father his ambition to become a grower of vegetables and fruits. In his summer months, it seemed, he had earned his way sweating on other men's farms, and he returned eager to bring life and prosperity to the old place. Other people were making money in his state, northerners of course, and why not he? He knew the secret of northern success—the careful oversight of workers and the willingness to pitch in and do things yourself. What if frost did come every few years and destroy all you had? You made allowance for that in your years of plenty. And so he argued, answering expressed doubts and unexpressed questionings, until at length his father answered: How should I object when it will keep you by my side? You have your mother's energy.

Lee had only a few recollections of his mother, but one was a bright picture of a young girl with golden-red hair digging energetically at the roots of a rose-bush. It was pleasant to think that, like him, she had loved the taste of the earth and the fragrance of growing things. His ambition was to down all the scoffers along the river and in the city who thought his ambition a passing amusement, and predicted abandonment and a season of gaiety during the coming winter.

Of the other members of the two households there were, at the great house, Miss Patty, as every one called her, John Merryvale's sister who came to him after his wife's death; and at the cabin in the pines, Tom, the son of the household, a serious, reliable boy, deliberate to slowness.

And lastly, there was Hertha. Ellen had insisted when they moved to Merryvale that Hertha remain a second year at her college, and the girl stayed away for that time; but the next season, the year Lee Merryvale went North, she made her entrance, a girl of nineteen, into Merryvale life. It was a modest entrance and she played her part shyly in the background. Hertha bore no resemblance to her sister and brother. Among the cabins in the pines you noticed her tightly curling hair and deep brown eyes, but as she moved about the great house you saw her graceful figure, her slender feet and hands, her small head on its long neck, her delicate nose and mouth, her white skin. She was a good needlewoman, and Miss Patty quickly seized upon her as her maid, and, for a pittance, Hertha worked for her by day, while at night and on Sundays she joined mother and brother and sister in the cabin. You's a contented chile, her mother used to say, an' 'member, dat's a gift. She had not been so contented in the city where she spent her childhood, but this new world by the river touched her spirit. She loved the quiet days, sewing and waiting on Miss Patty whose indolence and advancing years made her increasingly dependent. She loved on Sundays to take walks with Tom through the woods to where the creek set in, black, mysterious, a long line of cypresses guarding the stream. She was contented with her home, and her mind sometimes wandered when Ellen talked in the evening of plans for the future. Ellen was full of plans, she lived not for to-day but for to-morrow, but Hertha lived in to-day. Life was not always pleasant, the autumn tempests that lashed the great oaks and uprooted the pines were terrifying, but there were more days of sunshine than of storm. Lee Merryvale might sweat over his orange grove and swear at his workers, Ellen might lead out the whole settlement in a mad orgy of whitewashing, but no one expected anything disturbing from Hertha. Tom, once, painstakingly reading through a collection of poems acquired by Ellen in her school days as a prize, found the lines that suited the lady of his home; for, to Tom, Hertha was not only sister but queen.

"And hers shall be the breathing balm,

And hers the silence, and the calm

Of mute, insensate things."

CHAPTER II

Table of Contents

In a week Tom was going away to school. It should not come as a surprise, Ellen repeatedly told him, for she had from time to time apprised him of the approaching fulfilment of her plans; but Tom had rested, like Hertha, in the present moment, believing, too, that Ellen's plans might go astray. This, however, was little likely to take place, for in his older sister he dealt with a general, intelligent, resourceful, and with a contempt for the enemy, poverty. Her efforts had at length secured a scholarship, and four years of savings were to be expended for traveling and necessary clothes. The rest depended upon Tom who would be equipped to go out and do his share in gaining an education.

Surely, Ellen said at the supper-table when the announcement of the final arrangements was made, you know I'm right, Tom, and that a colored boy needs an education more than a white boy.

Aunt Maggie wiped her eyes. We sure need Tom, she said.

The older sister looked around the table, at Hertha's sad face, at Tom's sullen one, at her mother's tears, and for a moment felt the severity of the coming catastrophe; but for a moment only. Emotion soon gave place to reasoned thought.

Tom has a right to an education, she said solemnly. If he doesn't learn a trade at school he never will learn one, and we shouldn't keep him here no matter how much we shall need him and miss him.

Aunt Maggie rose. You don' know what it means, she said, to part a mudder f'om her only son. Her rich voice sounded with a certain finality as though, while appreciating Ellen's power, she wished her to understand her responsibility. You's taken a deal upon you'self. And she left her children and went into her room.

Tom and Hertha slipped out of doors. In time of trouble they always got away from the house, and now in silence they made their way to the river.

It was a hot night in late September with a wind blowing from the east. In the summer, unless held home by some imperative need, all the people of the plantation, black and white, came in the evening to the wharf to taste the fresh breeze. But the wharf