Part 38 (2/2)

”No!” said Hertha, ”I don't agree.” She was close to tears. Unless she told her whole story, nothing that she might say about the Negroes would count, and she was not prepared to tell her story. But her heart was hot with anger, and turning to d.i.c.k for the first time in the discussion she cried out, ”What do you know about it? You're nothing but a cheap Georgia cracker!” and with this retort rose from the table and hurried to her room.

”d.i.c.k, how could you?” Mrs. Pickens asked when the two were left alone together.

”I didn't begin it,” he said again.

”No, but you certainly went on with it. How can you expect a girl like Hertha to like you when you talk so coa.r.s.ely and say such terrible things? She was right, anyway; I'm a southerner and I don't believe such a sweeping statement as that.”

”Well, I do,” said d.i.c.k emphatically, back at the dispute again. ”I'm not a n.i.g.g.e.r lover.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief and, getting up, began to pace the room. ”That stiff old maid with her darned talk makes me want to kill somebody.”

He stopped in front of Mrs. Pickens and took up the subject again.

”Haven't I known the n.i.g.g.e.rs? They worked my father's land, when they didn't loaf and get drunk. Pure women! Every mother's child with a different father! I know 'em. Ain't I seen 'em, the splay-footed, stinking devils!”

Mrs. Pickens looked at him, surprised at the intensity of his feeling.

She had taken the black people all her life as a matter of course, accepting their failings and shortcomings, never questioning their inferiority, but also never questioning their good qualities and their value in the world in which she was reared.

”I think you ought not to talk that way about any human being,” she said gently, ”and on Sunday, too.”

”They ain't human,” d.i.c.k declared, and then added sulkily, ”anyway not more than half human.”

”You don't believe,” Mrs. Pickens spoke a little hesitatingly, ”you don't think, d.i.c.k, that they're our brothers in Christ?”

”No,” he roared in answer, ”they're no brothers of mine, the dirty, big-lipped, splay-footed bucks. What are you giving me? Want me to take 'em into my parlor, marry 'em to my sisters----”

”Oh, come!” said Mrs. Pickens, with a little laugh, ”I'm a southerner, you know! You don't have to talk that stuff to me.”

”Well, and ain't I a southerner? No, I'm nothing but a cheap Georgia cracker, that's what I am. But I ain't a n.i.g.g.e.r lover, anyway. Pretty way to talk to a feller, ain't it, now?” he said, facing Mrs. Pickens, the anger dying in his eyes.

”It was very unkind; I don't wonder you're angry.” Then she added, looking keenly at him, ”If she thinks that way about you, why don't you give her up?”

”Oh, don't say that!” The lad's whole appearance changed, his mouth softened, the tears started to his eyes. He gripped the table and looked at his woman friend as though she had struck him a blow. ”I couldn't stand that. I love her so.”

”But you know, d.i.c.k,” there was a teasing smile on Mrs. Pickens' face, ”an attractive girl like Hertha is sure to have a lot of beaus, and she can't marry all of them.”

”There isn't anybody else; you can see for yourself there isn't anybody else. I've got to have her. I'll go to the devil if I don't!”

He was so changed, so shaken with feeling, that Mrs. Pickens took the hand that hung by his side and patted it. And then to her amazement and her happiness, for it was good to mother this long-legged piece of masculinity, she found the boy kneeling by her side, his head buried on her shoulder.

”I suppose,” he said, looking up after a minute and blinking, ”she had an old black mammy that took care of her and loved her and that she loved. Perhaps,” contemptuously, ”she played with n.i.g.g.e.r babies when they were cute and small. n.i.g.g.e.r babies can be awful cute.”

Mrs. Pickens smoothed his ruffled hair, but said nothing.

”Well, I'm a Georgia cracker,” he declared next, with desperate calmness, ”and she's right in thinking I come cheap.”

”She didn't mean it like that!”

”I don't know what she meant,” he went on wearily. ”I don't half understand her. The only time we get along together is when neither of us says a word.”

Mrs. Pickens laughed, and d.i.c.k, rising sheepishly to his feet, walked to the open window. When he turned back he seemed his usual self again.

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