Thirty
THE RETURN OF ZORA
"I never realized before just what a lie meant," said Zora.
The paper in Mrs. Vanderpool's hands fell quickly to her lap, and she gazed across the toilet-table.
As she gazed that odd mirage of other days haunted her again. She did not seem to see her maid, nor the white and satin morning-room. She saw, with some long inner sight, a vast hall with mighty pillars; a smooth, marbled floor and a great throng whose silent eyes looked curiously upon her. Strange carven beasts gazed on from a setting of rich, barbaric splendor and she herself—the Liar—lay in rags before the gold and ivory of that lofty throne whereon sat Zora.
The foolish phantasy passed with the second of time that brought it, and Mrs. Vanderpool's eyes dropped again to her paper, to those lines,—
"The President has sent the following nominations to the Senate ... To be ambassador to France, John Vanderpool, Esq."
The first feeling of triumph thrilled faintly again until the low voice of Zora startled her. It was so low and calm, it came as though journeying from great distances and weary with travel.
"I used to think a lie a little thing, a convenience; but now I see. It is a great No and it kills things. You remember that day when Mr. Easterly called?"
"Yes," replied Mrs. Vanderpool, faintly.
"I heard all he said. I could not help it; my transom was open. And then, too, after he mentioned—Mr. Alwyn's name, I wanted to hear. I knew that his appointment would cost you the embassy—unless Bles was tempted and should fall. So I came to you to say—to say you mustn't pay the price."
"And I lied," said Mrs. Vanderpool. "I told you that he should be appointed and remain a man. I meant to make him see that he could yield without great cost. But I let you think I was giving up the embassy when I never intended to."
She spoke coldly, yet Zora knew. She reached out and took the white, still hands in hers, and over the lady's face again flitted that stricken look of age.
"I do not blame you," said Zora gently. "I blame the world."
"I am the world," Mrs. Vanderpool uttered harshly, then suddenly laughed. But Zora went on:
"It bewildered me when I first read the news early this morning; the world—everything—seemed wrong. You see, my plan was all so splendid. Just as I turned away from him, back to my people, I was to help him to the highest. I was so afraid he would miss it and think that Right didn't win in Life, that I wrote him—"
"You wrote him? So did I."
Zora glanced at her quickly.
"Yes," said Mrs. Vanderpool. "I thought I knew him. He seemed an ordinary, rather priggish, opinionated country boy, and I wrote and said—Oh, I said that the world is the world; take it as it is. You wrote differently, and he obeyed you."
"No; he did not know it was I. I was just a Voice from nowhere calling to him. I thought I was right. I wrote each day, sometimes twice, sending bits of verse, quotations, references, all saying the same thing: Right always triumphs. But it doesn't, does it?"
"No. It never does save by accident."
"I do not think that is quite so," Zora pondered aloud, "and I am a little puzzled. I do not belong in this world where Right and Wrong get so mixed. With us yonder there is wrong, but we call it wrong—mostly. Oh, I don't know; even there things are mixed." She looked sadly at Mrs. Vanderpool, and the fear that had been hovering behind her mistress's eyes became visible.
"It was so beautiful," said Zora. "I expected a great thing of you—a sacrifice. I do not blame you because you could not do it; and yet—yet, after this,—don't you see?—I cannot stay here."
Mrs. Vanderpool arose and walked over to her. She stood above her, in her silken morning-gown, her brown and gray sprinkled hair rising above the pale, strong-lined face.
"Zora," she faltered, "will you leave me?"
Zora answered, "Yes." It was a soft "yes," a "yes" full of pity and regret, but a "yes" that Mrs. Vanderpool knew in her soul to be final.
She sat down again on the lounge and her fingers crept along the cushions.
"Ambassadorships come—high," she said with a catch in her voice. Then after a pause: "When will you go, Zora?"
"When you leave for the summer."
Mrs. Vanderpool looked out upon the beautiful city. She was a little surprised at herself. She had found herself willing to sacrifice almost anything for Zora. No living soul had ever raised in her so deep an affection, and yet she knew now that, although the cost was great, she was willing to sacrifice Zora for Paris. After all, it was not too late; a rapid ride even now might secure high office for Alwyn and make Cresswell ambassador. It would be difficult but possible. But she had not the slightest inclination to attempt it, and she said aloud, half mockingly:
"You are right, Zora. I promised—and—I lied. Liars have no place in heaven and heaven is doubtless a beautiful place—but oh, Zora! you haven't seen Paris!"
Two months later they parted simply, knowing well it was forever. Mrs. Vanderpool wrote a check.
"Use this in your work," she said. "Miss Smith asked for it long ago. It is—my campaign contribution."
Zora smiled and thanked her. As she put the sealed envelope in her trunk her hand came in contact with a long untouched package. Zora took it out silently and opened it and the beauty of it lightened the room.
"It is the Silver Fleece," said Zora, and Mrs. Vanderpool kissed her and went.
Zora walked alone to the vaulted station. She did not try to buy a Pullman ticket, although the journey was thirty-six hours. She knew it would be difficult if not impossible and she preferred to share the lot of her people. Once on the foremost car, she leaned back and looked. The car seemed clean and comfortable but strangely short. Then she realized that half of it was cut off for the white smokers and as the door swung whiffs of the smoke came in. But she was content for she was almost alone.
It was eighteen little months ago that she had ridden up to the world with widening eyes. In that time what had happened? Everything. How well she remembered her coming, the first reflection of yonder gilded dome and the soaring of the capitol; the swelling of her heart, with inarticulate wonder; the pain of the thirst to know and understand. She did not know much now but she had learned how to find things out. She did not understand all, but some things she—
"Ticket"—the tone was harsh and abrupt. Zora started. She had always noted how polite conductors were to her and Mrs. Vanderpool—was it simply because Mrs. Vanderpool was evidently a great and rich lady? She held up her ticket and he snatched it from her muttering some direction.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
"Change at Charlotte," he snapped as he went on.
It seemed to Zora that his discourtesy was almost forced: that he was afraid he might be betrayed into some show of consideration for a black woman. She felt no anger, she simply wondered what he feared. The increasing smell of tobacco smoke started her coughing. She turned. To be sure. Not only was the door to the smoker standing open, but a white passenger was in her car, sitting by the conductor and puffing heartily. As the black porter passed her she said gently:
"Is smoking allowed in here?"
"It ain't non o' my business," he flung back at her and moved away. All day white men passed back and forward through the car as through a thoroughfare. They talked loudly and laughed and joked, and if they did not smoke they carried their lighted cigars. At her they stared and made comments, and one of them came and lounged almost over her seat, inquiring where she was going.
She did not reply; she neither looked nor stirred, but kept whispering to herself with something like awe: "This is what they must endure—my poor people!"
At Lynchburg a newsboy boarded the train with his wares. The conductor had already appropriated two seats for himself, and the newsboy routed out two colored passengers, and usurped two other seats. Then he began to be especially annoying. He joked and wrestled with the porter, and on every occasion pushed his wares at Zora, insisting on her buying.
"Ain't you got no money?" he asked. "Where you going?"
"Say," he whispered another time, "don't you want to buy these gold spectacles? I found 'em and I dassen't sell 'em open, see? They're worth ten dollars—take 'em for a dollar."
Zora sat still, keeping her eyes on the window; but her hands worked nervously, and when he threw a book with a picture of a man and half-dressed woman directly under her eyes, she took it and dropped it out the window.
The boy started to storm and demanded pay, while the conductor glared at her; but a white man in the conductor's seat whispered something, and the row suddenly stopped.
A gang of colored section hands got on, dirty and loud. They sprawled about and smoked, drank, and bought candy and cheap gewgaws. They eyed her respectfully, and with one of them she talked a little as he awkwardly fingered his cap.
As the day wore on Zora found herself strangely weary. It was not simply the unpleasant things that kept happening, but the continued apprehension of unknown possibilities. Then, too, she began to realize that she had had nothing to eat. Travelling with Mrs. Vanderpool there was always a dainty lunch to be had at call. She did not expect this, but she asked the porter:
"Do you know where I can get a lunch?"
"Search me," he answered, lounging into a seat. "Ain't no chance betwixt here and Danville as I knows on."
Zora viewed her plight with a certain dismay—twelve hours without food! How foolish of her not to have thought of this. The hours passed. She turned desperately to the gruff conductor.
"Could I buy a lunch from the dining-car?" she inquired.
"No," was the curt reply.
She made herself as comfortable as she could, and tried to put the matter from her mind. She remembered how, forgotten years ago, she had often gone a day without eating and thought little of it. Night came slowly, and she fell to dreaming until the cry came, "Charlotte! Change cars!" She scrambled out. There was no step to the platform, her bag was heavy, and the porter was busy helping the white folks to alight. She saw a dingy lunchroom marked "Colored," but she had no time to go to it for her train was ready.
There was another colored porter on this, and he was very polite and affable.
"Yes, Miss; certainly I'll fetch you a lunch—plenty of time." And he did. It did not look clean but Zora was ravenous.
The white smoker now had few occupants, but the white train crew proceeded to use the colored coach as a lounging-room and sleeping-car. There was no passenger except Zora. They took off their coats, stretched themselves on the seats, and exchanged jokes; but Zora was too tired to notice much, and she was dozing wearily when she felt a touch on the arm and found the porter in the seat beside her with his arm thrown familiarly behind her along the top of the back. She rose abruptly to her feet and he started up.
"I beg pardon," he said, grinning.
Zora sat slowly down as he got up and left. She determined to sleep no more. Yet a vast vision sank on her weary spirit—the vision of a dark cloud that dropped and dropped upon her, and lay as lead along her straining shoulders. She must lift it, she knew, though it were big as a world, and she put her strength to it and groaned as the porter cried in the ghostly morning light:
"Atlanta! All change!"
Away yonder at the school near Toomsville, Miss Smith sat waiting for the coming of Zora, absently attending the duties of the office. Dark little heads and hands bobbed by and soft voices called:
"Miss Smith, I wants a penny pencil."
"Miss Smith, is yo' got a speller fo' ten cents?"
"Miss Smith, mammy say please lemme come to school this week and she'll sho' pay Sata'day."
Yet the little voices that summoned her back to earth were less clamorous than in other years, for the school was far from full, and Miss Smith observed the falling off with grave eyes. This condition was patently the result of the cotton corner and the subsequent manipulation. When cotton rose, the tenants had already sold their cotton; when cotton fell the landlords squeezed the rations and lowered the wages. When cotton rose again, up went the new Spring rent contracts. So it was that the bewildered black serf dawdled in listless inability to understand. The Cresswells in their new wealth, the Maxwells and Tollivers in the new pinch of poverty, stretched long arms to gather in the tenants and their children. Excuse after excuse came to the school.
"I can't send the chilluns dis term, Miss Smith; dey has to work."
"Mr. Cresswell won't allow Will to go to school this term."
"Mr. Tolliver done put Sam in the field."
And so Miss Smith contemplated many empty desks.
Slowly a sort of fatal inaction seized her. The school went on; daily the dark little cloud of scholars rose up from hill and vale and settled in the white buildings; the hum of voices and the busy movements of industrious teachers filled the day; the office work went on methodically; but back of it all Miss Smith sat half hopeless. It cost five thousand a year to run the school, and this sum she raised with increasingly greater difficulty. Extra and heart-straining effort had been needed to raise the eight hundred dollars additional for interest money on the mortgage last year. Next year it might have to come out of the regular income and thus cut off two teachers. Beyond all this the raising of ten thousand dollars to satisfy the mortgage seemed simply impossible, and Miss Smith sat in fatal resignation, awaiting the coming day.
"It's the Lord's work. I've done what I could. I guess if He wants it to go on, He'll find a way. And if He doesn't—" She looked off across the swamp and was silent.
Then came Zora's letter, simple and brief, but breathing youth and strength of purpose. Miss Smith seized upon it as an omen of salvation. In vain her shrewd New England reason asked: "What can a half-taught black girl do in this wilderness?" Her heart answered back: "What is impossible to youth and resolution?" Let the shabbiness increase; let the debts pile up; let the boarders complain and the teachers gossip—Zora was coming. And somehow she and Zora would find a way.
And Zora came just as the sun threw its last crimson through the black swamp; came and gathered the frail and white-haired woman in her arms; and they wept together. Long and low they talked, far into the soft Southern night; sitting shaded beneath the stars, while nearby blinked the drowsy lights of the girls' dormitory. At last Miss Smith said, rising stiffly:
"I forgot to ask about Mrs. Vanderpool. How is she, and where?"
Zora murmured some answer; but as she went to bed in her little white room she sat wondering sadly. Where was the poor spoiled woman? Who was putting her to bed and smoothing the pillow? Who was caring for her, and what was she doing? And Zora strained her eyes Northward through the night.
At this moment, Mrs. Vanderpool, rising from a gala dinner in the brilliant drawing-room of her Lake George mansion, was reading the evening paper which her husband had put into her hands. With startled eyes she caught the impudent headlines:
VANDERPOOL DROPPED
Senate Refuses to Confirm
Todd Insurgents Muster Enough Votes to Defeat
Confirmation of President's Nominee
Rumored Revenge for Machine's Defeat of Child Labor
Bill Amendment.
The paper trembled in her jewelled hands. She glanced down the column.
"Todd asks: Who is Vanderpool, anyhow? What did he ever do? He is known only as a selfish millionaire who thinks more of horses than of men."
Carelessly Mrs. Vanderpool threw the paper to the floor and bit her lips as the angry blood dyed her face.
"They shall confirm him," she whispered, "if I have to mortgage my immortal soul!" And she rang up long distance on the telephone.