Even Mrs. St. Anthony and Mrs. Phillips and Miss Simpson who were used to such things, had never seen anything quite as elaborate as this. Whatever else they may think, there was only one thing that could be said of her in regards to this Christmas party—it was gotten together on an elaborate scale and it was well done.
When they entered, they were turned over to the maid who took them upstairs and ushered them into a room, where wraps were removed and checked and they had a chance to pin back a stray strand of hair or adjust a ribbon if they so wished, then when returning down stairs were announced by the butler—who was none other than young Bill Winston, hired and dressed up for the occasion, and who walked so straight and held his head so high that they wondered if he could see the folks he announced.—They entered timidly and in nervous little groups, following each other sheep-fashion, to the place where the hostess stood to receive them—not knowing, the most of them, whether to shake hands or simply bow, nor what to do with themselves afterwards.
But once the hostess greeted them they forgot their self-consciousness and their nervousness in looking at the vision of loveliness that had greeted them. She wore a lovely dress—“a most wonderful gown,” Mrs. Tucker said, “of some sort of white stuff—that looked soft, billowy clouds of fleece—dotted here and there with stones that shone like hundreds of stars and sparkled like thousands of diamonds under the blazing electric light;” and as Old Mrs. Ford said, “she made everybody feel so homey and comfortable.”
“Well I declare,” said Mrs. Phillips, “a bridal costume as I live”—as she gazed at the little spray of orange blossoms that nestled so lovingly in Mrs. Stark’s abundant dark hair.
“Do you know,” said Sara Simpson. “I believe she has invited us all to her wedding.”
Someone whispered, “Isn’t she glorious?” And it floated from one to the other around the room, there was a gentle hum as of bees in the distance, everybody seemed happy.
“I wonder where the Reverend is?” said old Mrs. St. Anthony.
Time passed and the older folks commenced to get restless—the younger ones were in dream-land and as the orchestra music was wafted so softly and temptingly on the air the younger folks looked longingly at the waxed floor glistening in the distance and wished the pastor would not show up so they could dance.
“Oh!” said Marie Phillips, “just for one turn on that floor”—and the rest echoed her wish.
People commenced to move nervously about, and to stand and talk in excited little groups. There was a hint of something in the air that no one could tell what it was—where was Rev. Steele? Why didn’t the wedding take place? Who was going to marry them?
Even Mrs. Stark was getting restless, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes fairly glistened and kept roaming toward the side entrance. Her hands played nervously with her fan—the young folks were almost tempted to ask could they dance.
The time seemed to pass so slowly and a wave of restlessness hard to control was fast gaining possession of the guests.
Everybody took to cautiously watching Mrs. Stark, who was walking aimlessly here and there around the rooms and talking nervously to first one guest and then another, but it was noticed that her glance wondered continually toward the side entrance, the music itself seemed to accelerate the restlessness of the crowd.
Suddenly the music changed—as the strains of Lohengrin’s Wedding March pealed joyously forth—the side door was thrown wide and the footman announced in a stentorian voice—“Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Steele.”
Everybody turned to look, and there standing framed in the doorway, smilingly stood the Rev. Jonathan Steele, and standing by his side—clinging to his arm stood his bride—timid little Alice Brown, in a simple white dress, looking for all the world like a happy Brown Thrush.
Of course everybody in the room could have told you, that they knew it was Alice Brown the pastor had been coming out into the lonely end of town to see.
And all the girls and spinsters who had held high hopes of becoming the pastor’s wife, will tell you that Rev. Steele is a passably good-looking man, but he is a long way from being a handsome one.
“Sour grapes,” says Mrs. Tucker. But the Ladies’ Aid and the Helping Hand ladies just looked at Alice’s mother Milly Brown, and wondered to themselves how she ever kept it to herself.
But it did not matter, only to a few like Miss Sara Simpson—whose chances of finding a husband were getting fewer each year and to Mrs. Phillips—who was anxious to see Marie safely settled, and to Mrs. St. Anthony, who could not now meddle so easily in the pastor’s household affairs. To the majority, he had married a St. Michaels girl and that was the main thing, so the church was decorated, good things donated, and the Christmas fete was a royal reception to the pastor and his bride. And to this day St. Michaels’ folks love to tell of the Christmas party and how it prevented a split in the church.
THREE MEN AND A WOMAN
Augustus M. Hodges
Augustus Hodges used social criticism to explore key themes in the African American experience during the 1890s and engaged controversial subjects of the time, such as interracial relations, lynching, miscegenation, racial stereotyping, white liberalism, the “New South,” and racism. “Three Men and a Woman” has a didactic tone, as Hodges assumes the role of commentator addressing these topics.
The story hinges around three Christmas Eves, the first in 1890, when the plot is hatched for Ella Watson, a young white woman, to get rid of her husband, Clarence Watson, and to trick her elderly white paramour, Captain Harry Seabergh, into giving her two thousand dollars so that she can be with Jerry Stratton, her black lover. Ella is the granddaughter of Nathan Bedford Forrester, a slave owner, importer of slaves from Africa, celebrated Confederate army general, and the founder of the Klu Klux Klan, which arose in Tennessee following the end of the Civil War.
The first seven chapters of “Three Men and a Woman” describe how Ella and Stratton accomplish their goal. However, Ella, who later marries Stratton, is not content to just stay in New York with him. She longs to visit her relatives in South Carolina. She convinces Stratton, a naive native-born New Yorker, to go to South Carolina with her, where they discover that the “New South,” so highly touted in the press, is infested with a virulent racism that is intolerant of interracial relationships.
The essential question raised by Hodges is what is the significance of Christmas to white Southerners? Do they have a “profound reverence and respect for the birthday of Christ,” as Stratton believes, or will they “commit murder on a holy day like Christmas or Good Friday?”
In “Three Men and a Woman,” Hodges effectively addresses the most salient issues of the time. He explodes the myth of black men raping white women and demonstrates that race supersedes any notion of American democratic ideals when the issue is the virtue of white womanhood, that the same forces in control during the antebellum period are in power after the Civil War, and that both miscegenation and violence against Southern blacks are widespread. Hodges’s interest in interracial love and the problems inherent in such relationships is in part related to his marriage in the 1890s to a Canadian white woman, who was disowned by her family for marrying a black man.
“Three Men and a Woman” is a fascinating story that falls outside the genre of short stories written and published by black writers of the time. Few black newspaper editors would have published a story such as this. Interestingly, the story’s serialization in the Indianapolis Freeman (1902–1903) ends abruptly after the publication of chapter 10, in which the town leaders have decided to lynch Stratton and Uncle Tom. The newspaper did not explain why the story was being discontinued, and readers were left with a cliffhanger. It is probable that the story, especially chapter 10, caused quite a stir with Booker T. Washington and his supporters, who would have viewed the depiction of “leading” white citizens as the architects, perpetrators, and manipulators of much of the lynching and violence against Southern blacks as highly dangerous. It is likely
that the readers demanded an ending to the story, causing the Indianapolis Freedman to reconsider its decision and complete publication.
Three Men and a Woman
Chapter I THE THREE MEN AND THE WOMAN
The time was the year of our Lord 1890, “the night before Christmas;” the place was New York City; the section was No.——West Forty-ninth street, near Fifth avenue. The place was a “Raine’s Law” hotel and ladies’ cafe, a place where “respectable” women (white of course) slipped in to have a drink during the day (or night) while their husbands were at work or business; in short, it was a gilded place of vice, “only this and nothing more”—a first class place of its kind.
The hour was 8 at night, while all outside was life and business; inside was dull and deserted. Christmas Eve, almost everybody in Greater New York over 10 years old can be found upon the streets until midnight, either buying Christmas presents or looking at others buy them.
Inside of the “Admiral Cafe,” as the back room of the hotel and bar room was called, marched up and down, a colored man, who the layman would call a plain waiter, but who considered himself (and was so registered) as night clerk and steward. He was of a dark brown complexion, little above the medium height, with unmistakable, but “fine” Negro features. His hair, which was of the three quarter blooded Negro grade, was cut short behind and long on top; it was well combed, brushed and oiled, and together with his faultless full dress suit made him look like a statesman, literary man or man of wealth, instead of—what he was.
As he walked the floor from one end to the other, he constantly looked at his gold watch. The echo of his steps resounded upon the marble-tiled “checker board” pattern of the floor. After walking up and down for an hour, he pulled out his watch and remarked to himself: “ ’Tis quarter to eight and she—”
Just then the street door opened and a pretty young white woman—a blonde—a picture for an artist to paint, entered the cafe—followed by a man below the average in size and mental looks. The colored waiter advanced towards the woman with an extended hand and smile upon his face. She winked her eyes, placed her fore finger across her lips, and remarked in a cold commanding tone: “Waiter, give me a ‘Bill of Fare’ until I see what my husband and I will have for supper.” (Great stress was placed—with a wise look—upon the words, “My husband!”) The colored attendant put on a sober, business like look and handed the woman a bill of fare. She looked over it a moment, passed it to her husband and without waiting for him to make his selection, said: “Waiter, give us two portions of ‘Lobster-a-la-Newbergh’ and a bottle of claret.” The waiter (as we will hereafter, in this chapter, call the colored man) went to the rear of the cafe, where he yelled the order for the lobster down stairs to the cook. He then went to the bar room where he got the bottle of claret, which he served in the latest style. In a few minutes a colored kitchen attendant brought the lobster and “trimmings” up from the kitchen and turned them over to the waiter, who served the same in great style. He had just done so when the door opened and a stately old man entered. A screen behind the door prevented his seeing in the room.
“Hello Jerry! has that friend of mine—”
The colored waiter raised a warning hand, winked his eye and placed his finger over his lips. The old man took the hint and finished his sentence with: “That friend of mine, Mr. Hopkins, been here to-night?”
“No sir,” was the reply.
The old man walked down the cafe and seated himself at a middle row table opposite the woman and her husband. He exchanged looks with the woman, but no one could tell from their looks that they had ever seen each other before. The old man ordered “a small bottle,” and made it last until the woman and her husband were gone. A description of the old man is needful: He was a tall, soldierly looking man over six feet, with hair and mustache as white as snow; and ideal picture of the “Silver King” in that well known play bearing that name, or the mythical “Kentucky Colonel,” of whom the funny men of the newspapers write so many jokes about. He was dressed in spotless black, with a long Prince Albert coat and high hat, with a deep widower’s band.
The waiter looked at his male guest from head to foot, then went to the mirror and looked at himself. It could be plainly seen that he concluded, that he was the best and most attractive looking of the three men; and he was.
The woman and her husband having finished their supper, she remarked to him: “Wait, my dear, until I find out where the ladies’ dressing room is and wash my hands and fix my hair.” Turning to the waiter, she asked: “Waiter, where is the ladies’ dressing room?”
She was standing with her back toward both men, and she winked her eye and passed a note to the waiter as he was directing her to the dressing room she well knew.
A few minutes after she and her husband left the room, and the colored waiter hastened to read the note. It was printed, or written in capital letters with a pencil, and was in cipher.
It read:
TELL ‘NO. 2’ TO MEET ‘NO. 4’ AT PARKER’S RESTAURANT AT 10 O’CLOCK, AS ‘NO. 3’ GOES TO BRIDGEPORT IN A HOUR. TELL ‘NO. 1’ TO MEET ‘NO. 4’ AT 1 O’CLOCK AT THIRTY-THIRD STREET AND SIXTH AVENUE. HAVE A CAB. ‘NO. 4.’
Immediately after reading the note, the waiter went over to the old man and said: “Ella says meet her at Parker’s at 10 o’clock, Capt.”
“Is that her husband?” asked the old man.
“That—is—her—husband,” slowly replied the waiter, as he walked away to wait upon other patrons, as the place was beginning to fill up with night patrons. At half past twelve the waiter was “off duty,” and after giving instructions to the man who took his place, he quickly put on his street clothes and hurried out to the corner of Thirty-third street and Sixth avenue, where he hired a cab; soon after the woman came up to the corner. She and the waiter entered the cab and were driven, by the waiter’s direction, to a house in West Sixteenth street, kept by a colored woman.
The three men and the woman, just spoken of, are the foundation of our story.
Chapter II THE “WOMAN”
Mrs. Ella Watson, whose maiden name was Forrester, was the granddaughter of one of the worst “nigger” hating slaveholders and rebels that South Carolina ever produced before the Civil war. She was born in C___, South Carolina, twenty-three years before our opening chapter. Her father was a drummer boy in the Confederate army, and her grandfather a general in the same “lost cause.” She had from infancy been taught to hate the Negro and treat him as an inferior, and did so until she reached the age of reason and was a graduate from one of the leading high schools for “F. F. V.” young ladies in the mother state of Virginia. The kindness of a male Negro servant, during her last year at the Virginia high school, convinced Ella Forrester that “niggers” were not as black as her people had painted them; that they were human beings like the whites; that they did not make or select their race or color; that their color and birth place (like her own) were the accidents of nature or fate. She at once resolved to treat Negro people as well as she did white people in the same walks of life.
Like all progressive, educated American young women, she did her own thinking, and often wished that the accident of birth had placed her north of the “Mason and Dixon’s line,” as the granddaughter of a private Union Civil War soldier, instead of the granddaughter of a Confederate general. She visited an uncle residing in Boston and noticed the vast progressive difference between the old North and the “New South,” and resolved to make the progressive North her home. Her folks would not agree to this, so she, with a faithful Negro maid, ran away from the God forsaken state of South Carolina to that portion of “God’s country” known as New York City, three years before our opening chapter. Her education secured for her a position as book keeper in one of the leading dry goods stores in Greater New York. After she had been with the firm for one year; after she had become a full fledged New York girl; after she had learned its faults and its fashions, its sins and its pleasures; after she had concluded t
hat she would not exist outside of Greater New York, the firm in which she was employed, failed, and she found herself without a penny. She “knew the ropes” by this time, and concluded to get married, as a married woman’s certificate (in New York City) covers a multitude of sins, so she took unto herself a husband.
Chapter III THE “HUSBAND”
Clarence Watson was a native of New York City, a printer by trade—a member of the “big six,” and an employee upon one of the leading New York City morning newspapers at the time of our opening. He was one of Greater New York’s bread winners, who put all confidence in his wife’s honesty in keeping her marriage vows. A year after—twelve months of happy married life—there was a “strike” upon the paper upon which he worked, and the printers’ places were filled with non union men, and Watson found himself “on the town” with house rent due. His wife came to his aid, and for several days (and nights) went to see her relatives (so she said) and each time “borrowed” two or five dollars. They lived on the “borrowed” (nightly) money for several months, when it dawned upon Watson that his wife was not getting the money from her relatives. He had by this time got used to a life of easy living; in which he had his house rent paid, plenty to eat, plenty to drink and money in his pocket to spend.
We all recall the story about the Quaker who told his son: “My son, thee must have money to get along in this world; get it honestly if thou can, but—get it.” Clarence Watson soon became a student of this school of philosophy. When he asked his wife for two or five dollars and she handed it to him, he did not ask her where or in what way she got it. In all large cities in the North and West the majority of the men are bread winners—sons of toil—still there is also a large minority who “toil not, neither do they spin,” yet they have all the good (and bad) things of life provided by their wives’ earnings, and they do not or dare not question the manner in which the money was earned. Watson soon drifted into this class, and when the strike was over and the union printers returned to their cases, he failed to answer the roll call. He informed his fellow workmen that he was living on “Easy Street,” and was out of the business. He became a full fledged “sport,” “played the races” and “poker” upon the money his wife gave him. When a woman gets a man to this degree, she (womanlike) rules him with an iron hand. When Mrs. Watson wanted him to go out for the night, she ordered him out, and—he went. When she wanted him to stay in the house, she ordered him to stay, and he did so.
A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories Page 11