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Bent Twig

<h2 id="id00310" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER VII</h2> <h5 id="id00311">"WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT …"</h5> The public school to which the Marshall children went as soon as they were old enough was like any one of ten thousand public schools—a large, square, many-windowed, extravagantly ugly building, once red brick, but long ago darkened almost to black by soft-coal smoke. About it, shaded by three or four big cottonwood-trees, was an inclosed space of perhaps two acres of ground, beaten perfectly smooth by hundreds of trampling little feet, a hard, bare earthen floor, so entirely subdued to its fate that even in the long summer vacation no spear of grass could penetrate its crust to remind it that it was made of common stuff with fields and meadows. School began at nine o'clock in the morning and, as a rule, three-fourths of the children had passed through the front gate twenty or thirty minutes earlier. Nobody knew why it should be considered such a hideous crime to be "tardy," but the fact was that not the most reckless and insubordinate of the older boys cared to risk it. Any one of the four hundred children in any public school in the city preferred infinitely to be absent a day than to have the ghastly experience of walking through deserted streets (that is, with no children on them), across the empty playground frighteningly unlike itself, into the long, desolate halls which, walk as cat-like as one might, resounded to the guilty footsteps with accusing echoes. And then the narrow cloakroom, haunted with limp, hanging coats and caps and hats, and finally the entry into the schoolroom, seated rank on rank with priggishly complacent schoolmates, looking up from their books with unfriendly eyes of blame at the figure of the late-comer. AH over that section of La Chance, during the hour between half-past seven and half-past eight in the morning, the families of school children were undergoing a most rigorous discipline in regularity and promptness. No child was too small or too timid to refrain from embittering his mother's life with clamorous upbraidings if breakfast were late, or his school-outfit of clothes were not ready to the last button, so that he could join the procession of schoolward-bound children, already streaming past his door at a quarter past eight. The most easy-going and self-indulgent mother learned to have at least one meal a day on time; and the children themselves during those eight years of their lives had imbedded in the tissue of their brains and the marrow of their bones that unrebelling habit of bending their backs daily to a regular burden of work not selected by themselves—which, according to one's point of view, is either the bane or the salvation of our modern industrial society. The region where the school stood was inhabited, for the most part, by American families or German and Irish ones so long established as to be virtually American; a condition which was then not infrequent in moderate-sized towns of the Middle West and which is still by no means unknown there. The class-rolls were full of Taylors and Aliens and Robinsons and Jacksons and Websters and Rawsons and Putnams, with a scattering of Morrisseys and Crimminses and O'Hearns, and some Schultzes and Brubackers and Helmeyers. There was not a Jew in the school, because there were almost none in that quarter of town, and, for quite another reason, not a single negro child. There were plenty of them in the immediate neighborhood, swarming around the collection of huts and shanties near the railroad tracks given over to negroes, and known as Flytown. But they had their own school, which looked externally quite like all the others in town, and their playground, beaten bare like that of the Washington Street School, was filled with laughing, shouting children, ranging from shoe-black through coffee-color to those occasional tragic ones with white skin and blue eyes, but with the telltale kink in the fair hair and the bluish half-moon at the base of the finger-nails. The four hundred children in the Washington Street School were, therefore, a mass more homogeneous than alarmists would have us believe it possible to find in this country. They were, for all practical purposes, all American, and they were all roughly of one class. Their families were neither rich nor poor (at least so far as the children's standards went). Their fathers were grocers, small clerks, merchants, two or three were truck-farmers, plumbers, carpenters, accountants, employees of various big businesses in town. It was into this undistinguished and plebeian mediocrity that the Marshall children were introduced when they began going to school. The interior of the school-building resembled the outside in being precisely like that of ten thousand other graded schools in this country. The halls were long and dark and dusty, and because the building had been put up under contract at a period when public contract-work was not so scrupulously honest as it notably is in our present cleanly muck-raked era, the steps of the badly built staircase creaked and groaned and sagged and gave forth clouds of dust under the weight of the myriads of little feet which climbed up and clown those steep ascents every day. Everything was of wood. The interior looked like the realized dream of a professional incendiary. The classrooms were high and well-lighted, with many large windows, never either very clean or very dirty, which let in a flood of our uncompromisingly brilliant American daylight upon the rows of little seats and desks screwed, like those of an ocean liner, immovably to the floor, as though at any moment the building was likely to embark upon a cruise in stormy waters. Outwardly the rows of clean-faced, comfortably dressed, well-shod American children, sitting in chairs, bore no resemblance to shaven-headed, barefooted little Arabian students, squatting on the floor, gabbling loud uncomprehended texts from the Koran; but the sight of Sylvia's companions bending over their school-books with glazed, vacant eyes, rocking back and forth as a rhythmical aid to memorizing, their lips moving silently as they repeated over and over, gabblingly, the phrases of the printed page, might have inclined a hypothetical visitor from Mars to share the bewildered amusement of the American visitors to Moslem schools. Sylvia rocked and twisted a favorite button, gabbled silently, and recited fluently with the rest, being what was known as an apt and satisfactory pupil. In company with the other children she thus learned to say, in answer to questions, that seven times seven is forty-nine; that the climate of Brazil is hot and moist; that the capital of Arkansas is Little Rock; and that "through" is spelled with three misleading and superfluous letters. What she really learned was, as with her mates, another matter—for, of course, those devouringly active little minds did not spend six hours a day in school without learning something incessantly. The few rags and tatters of book-information they acquired were but the merest fringes on the great garment of learning acquired by these public-school children, which was to wrap them about all their lives. What they learned during those eight years of sitting still and not whispering had nothing to do with the books in their desks or the lore in their teachers' brains. The great impression stamped upon the wax of their minds, which became iron in after years, was democracy—a crude, distorted, wavering image of democracy, like every image an ideal in this imperfect world, but in its essence a reflection of the ideal of their country. No European could have conceived how literally it was true that the birth or wealth or social position of a child made no difference in the estimation of his mates. There were no exceptions to the custom of considering the individual on his own merits. These merits were often queerly enough imagined, a faculty for standing on his head redounding as much, or more, to a boy's credit as the utmost brilliance in recitation, or generosity of temperament, but at least he was valued for something he himself could do, and not for any fortuitous incidents of birth and fortune. Furthermore there lay back of these four hundred children, who shaped their world to this rough-and-ready imitation of democracy, their families, not so intimately known to each other, of course, as the children themselves, but still by no means unknown in their general characteristics; four hundred American families who were, on the whole, industrious, law-abiding, who loved their children, who were quite tasteless in matters of art, and quite sound though narrow in matters of morals, utterly mediocre in intelligence and information, with no breadth of outlook in any direction; but who somehow lived their lives and faced and conquered all the incredible vicissitudes of that Great Adventure, with an unconscious, cheerful fortitude which many an acuter mind might have envied them. It is possible that the personal knowledge of these four hundred enduring family lives was, perhaps, the most important mental ballast taken on by the children of the community during their eight years' cruise at school. Certainly it was the most important for the sensitive, complicated, impressionable little Sylvia Marshall, with her latent distaste for whatever lacked distinction and external grace, and her passion for sophistication and elegance, which was to spring into such fierce life with the beginning of her adolescence. She might renounce, as utterly as she pleased, the associates of her early youth, but the knowledge of their existence, the acquaintance with their deep humanity, the knowledge that they found life sweet and worth living, all this was to be a part of the tissue of her brain forever, and was to add one to the conflicting elements which battled within her for the mastery during all the clouded, stormy radiance of her youth. The families which supplied the Washington Street School being quite stationary in their self-owned houses, few new pupils entered during the school-year. There was, consequently, quite a sensation on the day in the middle of March when the two Fingál girls entered, Camilla in the "Fifth A" grade, where Sylvia was, and Cécile in the third grade, in the next seat to Judith's. The girls themselves were so different from other children in school that their arrival would have excited interest even at the beginning of the school-year. Coming, as they did, at a time when everybody knew by heart every detail of every one else's appearance from hair-ribbon to shoes, these two beautiful exotics, in their rich, plain, mourning dresses were vastly stared at. Sylvia's impressionable eyes were especially struck by the air of race and breeding of the new-comer in her class. Everything about the other child, from her heavy black hair, patrician nose, and large dark eyes to her exquisitely formed hands, white and well-cared-for, seemed to Sylvia perfection itself. During recess she advanced to the new-comer, saying, with a bright smile: "Aren't you thirsty? Don't you want me to show you where the pump is?" She put out her hand as she spoke and took the slim white fingers in her own rough little hand, leading her new schoolmate along in silence, looking at her with an open interest. She had confidently expected amicable responsiveness in the other little girl, because her experience had been that her own frank friendliness nearly always was reflected back to her from others; but she had not expected, or indeed ever seen, such an ardent look of gratitude as burned in the other's eyes. She stopped, startled, uncomprehending, as though her companion had said something unintelligible, and felt the slim fingers in her hand close about her own in a tight clasp. "You are so very kind to show me this pump," breathed Camilla shyly. The faint flavor of a foreign accent which, to Sylvia's ear, hung about these words, was the final touch of fascination for her. That instant she decided in her impetuous, enthusiastic heart that Camilla was the most beautiful, sweetest, best-dressed, loveliest creature she had ever seen, or would ever see in her life; and she bent her back joyfully in the service of her ideal. She would not allow Camilla to pump for herself, but flew to the handle with such energy that the white water gushed out in a flood, overflowing Camilla's cup, spattering over on her fingers, and sparkling on the sheer white of her hemstitched cuffs. This made them both laugh, the delicious silly laugh of childhood. Already they seemed like friends. "How do you pronounce your name?" Sylvia asked familiarly. "Cam-eela Fingál," said the other, looking up from her cup, her upper lip red and moist. She accented the surname on the last syllable. "What a perfectly lovely name!" cried Sylvia. "Mine is Sylvia Marshall." "That's a pretty name too," said Camilla, smiling. She spoke less timidly now, but her fawn-like eyes still kept their curious expression, half apprehension, half hope. "How old are you?" asked Sylvia. "Eleven, last November." "Why, my birthday is in November, and I was eleven too!" cried Sylvia. "I thought you must be older—you're so tall." Camilla looked down and said nothing. Sylvia went on: "I'm crazy about the way you do your hair, in those twists over your ears. When I was studying my spelling lesson, I was trying to figure out how you do it." "Oh, I don't do it. Mattice does it for us—for Cécile and me—Cécile's my sister. She's in the third grade." "Why, I have a sister in the third grade too!" exclaimed Sylvia, much struck by this second propitious coincidence. "Her name is Judith and she's a darling. Wouldn't it be nice if she and Cécile should be good friends too!" She put her arm about her new comrade's waist, convinced that they were now intimates of long standing. They ran together to take their places at the sound of the bell; all during the rest of the morning session she smiled radiantly at the new-comer whenever their eyes met. She planned to walk part way home with her at noon, but she was detained for a moment by the teacher, and when she reached the front gate, where Judith was waiting for her, Camilla was nowhere in sight. Judith explained with some disfavor that a surrey had been waiting for the Fingál girls and they had been driven away. Sylvia fell into a rhapsody over her new acquaintance and found to her surprise (it was always a surprise to Sylvia that Judith's tastes and judgments so frequently differed from hers) that Judith by no means shared her enthusiasm. She admitted, but as if it were a matter of no importance, that both Camilla and Cécile were pretty enough, but she declared roundly that Cécile was a little sneak who had set out from the first to be "Teacher's pet." This title, in the sturdy democracy of the public schools, means about what "sycophantic lickspittle" means in the vocabulary of adults, and carries with it a crushing weight of odium which can hardly ever be lived down. "Judith, what makes you think so?" cried Sylvia, horrified at the epithet. "The way she looks at Teacher—she never takes her eyes off her, and just jumps to do whatever Teacher says. And then she looks at everybody so kind o' scared—'s'if she thought she was goin' to be hit over the head every minute and was so thankful to everybody for not doing it. Makes me feel just like doin' it!" declared Judith, the Anglo-Saxon. Sylvia recognized a scornful version of the appealing expression which she had found so touching in Camilla. "Why, I think it's sweet of them to look so! When they're so awfully pretty, and have such good clothes—and a carriage—and everything! They might be as stuck-up as anything! I think it's just nice for them to be so sweet!" persisted Sylvia. "I don't call it bein' sweet," said Judith, "to watch Teacher every minute and smile all over your face if she looks at you and hold on to her hand when she's talkin' to you! It's silly!" They argued all the way home, and the lunch hour was filled with appeals to their parents to take sides. Professor and Mrs. Marshall, always ready, although occasionally somewhat absent, listeners to school news, professed themselves really interested in these new scholars and quite perplexed by the phenomenon of two beautiful dark-eyed children, called Camilla and Cécile Fingál. Judith refused to twist her tongue to pronounce the last syllable accented, and her version of the name made it sound Celtic. "Perhaps their father is Irish and the mother Italian or Spanish," suggested Professor Marshall. Sylvia was delighted with this hypothesis, and cried out enthusiastically, "Oh yes—Camilla looks Italian—like an Italian princess!" Judith assumed an incredulous and derisive expression and remained silent, an achievement of self-control which Sylvia was never able to emulate. The Fingál girls continued to occupy a large space in Sylvia's thoughts and hours, and before long they held a unique position in the opinion of the school, which was divided about evenly between the extremes represented by Sylvia and Judith. The various accomplishments of the new-comers were ground both for uneasy admiration and suspicion. They could sing like birds, and, what seemed like witchcraft to the unmusical little Americans about them, they could sing in harmony as easily as they could carry an air. And they recited with fire, ease, and evident enjoyment, instead of with the show of groaning, unwilling submission to authority which it was etiquette in the Washington Street School to show before beginning to "speak a piece." They were good at their books too, and altogether, with their quick docility, picturesqueness, and eagerness to please, were the delight of their teachers. In the fifth grade, Sylvia's example of intimate, admiring friendship definitely threw popular favor on the side of Camilla, who made every effort to disarm the hostility aroused by her too-numerous gifts of nature. She was ready to be friends with the poorest and dullest of the girls, never asked the important rôles in any games, hid rather than put forward the high marks she received in her studies, and was lavish with her invitations to her schoolmates to visit her at home. The outside of this house, which Mr. Fingál had rented a month or so before when they first moved to La Chance, was like any one of many in the region; but the interior differed notably from those to which the other children were accustomed. For one thing there was no "lady of the house," Mrs. Fingál having died a short time before. Camilla and Cécile could do exactly as they pleased, and they gave the freedom of the house and its contents lavishly to their little friends. In the kitchen was an enormous old negro woman, always good-natured, always smelling of whiskey. She kept on hand a supply of the most meltingly delicious cakes and cookies, and her liberal motto, "Heah, chile, put yo' han' in the cookie-jah and draw out what you lights on!" was always flourished in the faces of the schoolmates of the two daughters of the house. In the rest of the house, filled with dark, heavy, dimly shining furniture, reigned Mattice, another old negro woman, but, unlike the jolly, fat cook, yellow and shriveled and silent. She it was who arrayed Camille and Cécile with such unerring taste, and her skilful old hands brushed and dressed their long black hair in artful twists and coils. Here, against their own background, the two girls seemed more at their ease and showed more spontaneity than at school. They were fond of "dressing up" and of organizing impromptu dramatizations of the stories of familiar books, and showed a native ability for acting which explained their success in recitations. Once when the fun was very rollicking, Camilla brought out from a closet a banjo and, thrumming on its strings with skilful fingers, played a tingling accompaniment to one of her songs. The other little girls were delighted and clamored for more, but she put it away quickly with almost a frown on her sweet face, and for once in her life did not yield to their demands. "Well, I think more of her for that!" remarked Judith, when this incident was repeated to her by Sylvia, who cried out, "Why, Judy, how hateful you are about poor Camilla!" Nothing was learned about the past history of the Fingáls beyond the fact, dropped once by the cook, that they had lived in Louisiana before coming to La Chance, but there were rumors, based on nothing at all, and everywhere credited, that their mother had been a Spanish-American heiress, disinherited by her family for marrying a Protestant. Such a romantic and picturesque element had never before entered the lives of the Washington Street school-children. Once a bold and insensitive little girl, itching to know more of this story-book history, had broken the silence about Mrs. Fingál and had asked Camilla bluntly, "Say, who was your mother, anyway?" The question had been received by Camilla with whitening lips and a desperate silence—ended by a sudden loud burst of sobs, which tore Sylvia's heart. "You mean, horrid thing!" she cried to the inquisitor. "Her mother isn't dead a year yet! Camilla can't bear to talk about her!" Once in a great while Mr. Fingál was visible,—a bald, middle-aged man with a white, sad face, and eyes that never smiled, although his lips often did when he saw the clusters of admiring children hanging about his daughters. Judith held aloof from these gatherings at the Fingál house, her prejudice against the girls never weakening, although Cécile as well as Camilla had won over almost all the other girls of her grade. Judith showed the self-contained indifference which it was her habit to feel about matters which did not deeply stir her, and made no further attempts to analyze or even to voice her animosity beyond saying once, when asked to go with them on a drive, that she didn't like their "meechin' ways,"—a vigorous New England phrase which she had picked up from her mother. * * * * * About a month after the Fingál girls entered school, the project of a picnic took form among the girls of the Fifth A grade. One of them had an uncle who lived three or four miles from town on a farm which was passed by the inter-urban trolley line, and he had sent word that the children could, if they liked, picnic in his maple woods, which overhung the brown waters of the Piquota river. There was to be no recess that day in Five A, and the grade was to be dismissed half an hour earlier than usual, so that the girls could go out on the trolley in time to get the supper ready. The farmer was to bring them back by moonlight in his hay-wagon. The prospect seemed ideal. Five A hummed with excitement and importance as the various provisions were allotted to the different girls and the plans talked over. Sylvia was to bring bananas enough for the crowd; one of the German-American girls, whose father kept a grocery-store, promised pickles and olives; three or four together were to make the sandwiches, and Camilla Fingál was to bring along a big bag of the famous rich and be-raisined cookies that lived in the "cookie-jah." Sylvia, who always enjoyed prodigiously both in anticipation and in reality any social event, could scarcely contain herself as the time drew near with every prospect of fair weather. The morning of the day was clear and fine, a perfect example of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleaming gray along the margins of swampy places. Sylvia and Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new life. They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no reason, racing and skipping like a couple of spring lambs, their minds and hearts as crystal-clear of any shadow as the pale-blue, smiling sky above them. The rising sap beat in their young bodies as well as in the beech-trees through which they scampered, whirling their school-books at the end of their straps, and shouting aloud to hear the squirrel's petulant, chattering answer. When they came within sight and hearing of the schoolhouse, their practised ears detected (although with no hint of foreboding) that something unusual had happened. The children were not running about and screaming, but standing with their heads close together, talking, and talking, and talking. As Judith and Sylvia came near, several ran to meet them, hurling out at them like a hard-flung stone: "Say—what d'ye think? Those Fingál girls are niggers!" To the end of her life, Sylvia would never forget the rending shock of disillusion brought her by these blunt words. She did not dream of disbelieving them, or of underestimating their significance. A thousand confirmatory details leaped into her mind: the rich, sweet voices—the dramatic ability—the banjo—the deprecatory air of timidity—the self-conscious unwillingness to take the leading position to which their talents and beauty gave them a right. Yes, of course it was true! In the space of a heartbeat, all her romantic Italian imaginings vanished. She continued to walk forward mechanically, in an utter confusion of mind. She heard Judith asking in an astonished voice, "Why, what makes you think so?" and she listened with a tortured attention to the statement vouchsafed in an excited chorus by a great many shrill little voices that the Fingáls' old cook had taken a little too much whiskey for once and had fallen to babbling at the grocery-store before a highly entertained audience of neighbors, about the endless peregrinations of the Fingál family in search of a locality where the blood of the children would not be suspected—"an' theah motheh, fo' all heh good looks, second cousin to Mattice!" she had tittered foolishly, gathering up her basket and rolling tipsily out of the store. "Well—" said Judith, "did you ever!" She was evidently as much amazed as her sister, but Sylvia felt with a sinking of the heart that what seemed to her the real significance of the news had escaped Judith. The Five A girls came trooping up to Sylvia.—"Of course we can't have Camilla at the picnic."—"My uncle wouldn't want a nigger there."—"We'll have to tell her she can't come." Sylvia heard from the other groups of children about them snatches of similar talk.—"Anybody might ha' known it—singin' the way they do—just like niggers' voices."—"They'll have to go to the nigger school now."—"Huh! puttin' on airs with their carriage and their black dresses—nothin' but niggers!" The air seemed full of that word. Sylvia sickened and quailed. Not so Judith! It had taken her a moment to understand the way in which the news was being received. When she did, she turned very pale, and broke out into a storm of anger. She stuttered and halted as she always did when overmastered by feeling, but her words were molten. She ignored the tacit separation between children of different grades and, though but a third-grader, threw herself passionately among the girls who were talking of the picnic, clawing at their arms, forcing her way to the center, a raging, white-faced, hot-eyed little thunderbolt. "You're the meanest low-down things I ever heard of!" she told the astonished older girls, fairly spitting at them in her fury. "You—you go and s-sponge off the Fingáls for c-c-cakes and rides and s-s-soda water—and you think they're too l-l-lovely for w-words—and you t-t-try to do your hair just the way C-C-Camilla does. They aren't any different today f-f-from what they were yesterday—are they? You make me sick—you m-m-make m-m-me—" The big bell rang out its single deep brazen note for the formation of lines, and the habit of unquestioning, instant obedience to its voice sent the children all scurrying to their places, from which they marched forward to their respective classrooms in their usual convict silence. Just as the line ahead was disappearing into the open door, the well-kept, shining surrey drove up in haste and Camilla and Cécile, dazzling in fresh white dresses and white hair ribbons, ran to their places. Evidently they had heard nothing. Camilla turned and smiled brightly at her friend as she stepped along in front of her. Sylvia experienced another giddy reaction of feeling. Up to that moment, she had felt nothing but shocked and intensely self-centered horror at the disagreeableness of what had happened, and a wild desire to run away to some quiet spot where she would not have to think about it, where it could not make her unhappy, where her heart would stop beating so furiously. What had she ever done to have such a horrid thing happen in her world! She had been as much repelled by Judith's foaming violence as by any other element of the situation. If she could only get away! Every sensitive nerve in her, tuned to a graceful and comely order of life, was rasped to anguish by the ugliness of it all. Up to the moment Camilla came running to her place—this had been the dominant impulse in the extreme confusion of Sylvia's mind. But at the sight of Camilla she felt bursting up through this confusion of mind, and fiercely attacking her instinct of self-preservation, a new force, unsuspected, terribly alive—sympathy with Camilla—Camilla, with her dog-like, timid, loving eyes—Camilla, who had done nothing to deserve unhappiness except to be born—Camilla, always uneasy with tragic consciousness of the sword over her head, and now smiling brightly with tragic unconsciousness that it was about to fall. Sylvia's heart swelled almost unendurably. She was feeling, for the first time in her life consciously, the two natures under her skin, and this, their first open struggle for the mastery of her, was like a knife in her side. She sat during the morning session, her eyes on the clock, fearing miserably the moment of dismissal at noon, when she must take some action—she who only longed to run away from discord and dwell in peace. Her mind swung, pendulum-like, from one extreme of feeling to another. Every time that Camilla smiled at her across the heads of the other children, sullenly oblivious of their former favorite, Sylvia turned sick with shame and pity. But when her eyes rested on the hard, hostile faces which made up her world, the world she had to live in, the world which had been so full of sweet and innocent happiness for her, the world which would now be ranged with her or against her according to her decision at noon, she was overcome by a panic at the very idea of throwing her single self against this many-headed tyrant. With an unspeakable terror she longed to feel the safe walls of conformity about her. There was a battle with drawn swords in the heart of the little girl trying blindly to see where the n came in "pneumonia." The clock crept on, past eleven, towards twelve. Sylvia had come to no decision. She could come to no decision! She felt herself consciously to be unable to cope with the crisis. She was too small, too weak, too shrinking, to make herself iron, and resist an overwhelming force. It was five minutes of twelve. The order was given to put away books and pencils in the desks. Sylvia's hands trembled so that she could hardly close the lid. "Turn!" said the teacher, in her tired, mechanical voice. The children turned their stubbed-toed shoes out into the aisle, their eyes menacingly on Camilla. "Rise!" Like a covey of partridge, they all stood up, stretching, twisting their bodies, stiff and torpid after the long hours of immobility. "Pass!" Clattering feet all over the building began moving along the aisles and out towards the cloakrooms. Every one seized his own wraps with a practised snatch, and passed on, still in line, over the dusty wooden floors of the hall, down the ill-built, resounding stairs, out to the playground—out to Sylvia's ordeal. As she came out blinkingly into the strong spring sunlight, she still had reached no decision. Her impulse was to run, as fast as she could, out to the gate and down the street—home! But another impulse held her back. The lines were breaking up. Camilla was turning about with a smile to speak to her. Malevolent eyes were fixed on them from all sides. Sylvia felt her indecision mount in a cloud about her, like blinding, scalding steam. And then, there before her, stood Judith, her proud dark little face set in an angry scowl, her arm about Cécile Fingál's neck. Sylvia never could think what she would have done if Judith had not been there; but then, Judith was one of the formative elements of her life—as much as was the food she ate or the thoughts she had. What she did was to turn as quickly and unhesitatingly as though she had always meant to do it, put her arm through Camilla's and draw her rapidly towards the gate where the surrey waited. Judith and Cécile followed. The crowds of astonished, and for the moment silenced, children fell back before them. Once she had taken her action, Sylvia saw that it was the only one possible. But she was upheld by none of the traditional pride in a righteous action, nor by a raging single-mindedness like Judith's, who stalked along, her little fists clenched, frowning blackly to right and left on the other children, evidently far more angry with them than sympathetic for Cécile. Sylvia did not feel angry with any one. She was simply more acutely miserable than she had ever dreamed possible. The distance to the surrey seemed endless to her. Her sudden rush had taken Camilla so completely by surprise that not until they were at the gate did she catch her breath to ask laughingly: "What in the world's the matter with you, Sylvia? You act so queer!" Sylvia did not answer, every nerve bent on getting Camilla into safety, but a little red-headed boy from the second grade, who could scarcely talk plainly, burst out chantingly, pointing his dirty forefinger at Camilla: "Nigger, nigger, never die, Black face and shiny eye, Curly hair and curly toes— That's the way the nigger goes!" There was a loud laugh from the assembled children. Camilla wavered as though she had been struck. Her lovely face turned ashy-gray, and she looked at Sylvia with the eyes of one dying. From the deepest of her nature, Sylvia responded to that look. She forgot the crowd,—boldly, unafraid, beside herself with pity, she flung her arms about her friend's neck, hiding the white face on her shoulder. Judith ran up, blazing with rage, and pulled at Camilla's arm. "Don't give in! Don't give in!" she screamed. "Don't cry! Don't let 'em see you care! Sass 'em back, why don't you? Hit that little boy over the head! Sass them back, why don't you?" But Camilla only shook her head vehemently and shrank away into the carriage, little Cécile stumbling after, the silent tears streaming down her face. The two clasped each other, and the surrey drove quickly away, leaving the Marshall girls standing on the curb. Judith turned around and faced the crowds of enemies back of them. "Nasty old things!" she cried, sticking out her tongue at them. She was answered by a yell, at which she made another face and walked away, pulling Sylvia with her. For a few steps they were followed by some small boys who yelled in chorus: "Judith's mad and I'm glad, And I know what'll please her: A bottle of wine to make her shine, And two little niggers to squeeze her!" They were beginning this immemorially old chant over again when Judith turned and ran back towards them with a white, terrible face of wrath. At the sight they scattered like scared chickens. Judith was so angry that she was shivering all over her small body, and she kept repeating at intervals, in a suffocated voice: "Nasty old things! Just wait till I tell my father and mother!" As they passed under the beech-trees, it seemed to Sylvia a physical impossibility that only that morning they had raced and scampered along, whirling their school-books and laughing. They ran into the house, calling for their parents in excited voices, and pouring out incoherent exclamations. Sylvia cried a little at the comforting sight of her mother's face and was taken up on Mrs. Marshall's lap and closely held. Judith never cried; she had not cried even when she ran the sewing-machine needle through her thumb; but when infuriated she could not talk, her stammering growing so pronounced that she could not get out a word, and it was Sylvia who told the facts. She was astonished to find them so few and so quickly stated, having been under the impression that something of intense and painful excitement had been happening every moment of the morning. But the experience of her parents supplied the tragic background of strange, passionate prejudice which Sylvia could not phrase, and which gave its sinister meaning to her briefly told story: "—and so Judith and I walked with them out to the gate, and then that little Jimmy Cohalan yelled out, 'nigger—nigger'—you know—" Judith broke in, her nostrils distended, "And they never sassed back, or hit anybody or anything—just crumpled up and cried!" Sylvia was aghast with bewilderment. "Why, I thought you were on their side!" "Well, I am!" asserted Judith, beginning to stammer again. "But I don't have to like 'em any better, do I—because I get mad when a l-l-lot of mean, n-nasty girls that have b-b-b-been s-s-spongin' off—" She stopped, balked by her infirmity, and appealed to her parents with a silent look of fury. "What shall we do, Mother?" asked Sylvia despairingly, looking up into her mother's face from the comfortable shelter of her long, strong arms. Mrs. Marshall looked down at her without speaking. It occurred to Sylvia disquietingly that her mother's expression was a little like Judith's. But when Mrs. Marshall spoke it was only to say in her usual voice: "Well, the first thing to do is to have something to eat. Whatever else you do, don't let a bad condition of your body interfere with what's going on in your mind. Lunch is getting cold—and don't talk about trouble while you're eating. After you're through, Father'll tell you what to do." Professor Marshall made a gesture of dismay. "Good Lord, Barbara, don't put it off on me!" His wife looked at him with smoldering eyes. "I certainly have nothing to say that would be fit for children to hear!" she said in an energetic tone, beginning to serve the baked beans, which were the main dish for the day. After the meal, always rather hasty because of the children's short noon-hour, Sylvia and Judith went to sit on their father's knees, while he put an arm about each and, looking from one serious expectant face to the other, began his explanation. He cleared his throat, and hesitated before beginning, and had none of his usual fluency as he went on. What he finally said was: "Well, children, you've stumbled into about the hardest problem there is in this country, and the honest truth is that we don't any of us know what's right to do about it. The sort of thing that's just happened in the Washington Street School is likely to happen 'most anywhere, and it's no harder on these poor little playmates of yours than on all colored people. But it's awfully hard on them all. The best we can do is to hope that after a great many people have lived and died, all trying to do their best, maybe folks will have learned how to manage better. Of course, if grown men and women don't know how to help matters, you little girls can't expect to fix things either. All you can do is to go on being nice to Camilla and—" Judith broke in here hotly, "You don't mean we oughtn't to do something about the girls being so mean to them—not letting Camilla go to the picnic and—" "What could you do?" asked her father quietly, "that would make things any better for Camilla? If you were forty times as strong as you are, you couldn't make the other girls want Camilla at the picnic. It would only spoil the picnic and wouldn't help Camilla a bit." Professor Marshall meditated a moment, and went on, "Of course I'm proud of my little daughters for being kind to friends who are unhappy through no fault of theirs" (Sylvia winced at this, and thought of confessing that she was very near running away and leaving Camilla to her fate), "and I hope you'll go on being as nice to your unfortunate friends as ever—" Judith said: "They aren't friends of mine! I don't like them!" As not infrequently happened, something about Judith's attitude had been irritating her father, and he now said with some severity, "Then it's a case where Sylvia's loving heart can do more good than your anger, though you evidently think it very fine of you to feel that!" Judith looked down in a stubborn silence, and Sylvia drooped miserably in the consciousness of receiving undeserved praise. She opened her mouth to explain her vacillations of the morning, but her moral fiber was not equal to the effort. She felt very unhappy to have Judith blamed and herself praised when things ought to have been reversed, but she could not bring herself to renounce her father's good opinion. Professor Marshall gave them both a kiss and set them down. "It's twenty minutes to one. You'd better run along, dears," he said. After the children had gone out, his wife, who had preserved an unbroken silence, remarked dryly, "So that's the stone we give them when they ask for bread." Professor Marshall made no attempt to defend himself. "My dim generalities are pretty poor provender for honest children's minds, I admit," he said humbly, "but what else have we to give them that isn't directly contradicted by our lives? There's no use telling children something that they never see put into practice." "It's not impossible, I suppose, to change our lives," suggested his wife uncompromisingly. Professor Marshall drew a great breath of disheartenment. "As long as I can live without thinking of that element in American life—it's all right. But when anything brings it home—like this today—I feel that the mean compromise we all make must be a disintegrating moral force in the national character. I feel like gathering up all of you, and going away—away from the intolerable question—to Europe—and earning the family living by giving English lessons!" Mrs. Marshall cried out, "It makes me feel like going out right here in La Chance with a bomb in one hand and a rifle in the other!" From which difference of impression it may perhaps be seen that the two disputants were respectively the father and mother of Sylvia and Judith. Mrs. Marshall rose and began clearing away the luncheon dishes. As she disappeared into the kitchen, she paused a moment behind the door, a grim, invisible voice, remarking, "And what we shall do is, of course, simply nothing at all!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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