Chapter IV THE “OLD MAN”
Capt. Harry Seabergh was, at our opening, a man of sixty-four, a German by birth, who came to this country with his parents when he was four years old. His father was a civil engineer and a man of money, who gave his son a good high school education and then sent him to Yale, where he graduated with honors. His father died the day the son was twenty-one, and the mother six months later. Young Seabergh possessed his father’s wealth which he invested in Brooklyn real estate, which paid him about three hundred per cent. He went to the Civil War a captain in Company C, 99th N. Y. Volunteer, and was a brave soldier. He married and was the father of six daughters, five of whom were married at the date of the opening of this story, and all of them older than “the woman in the case.” His wife, who had been a helpless invalid for three years, died seven months before the beginning of this romance. He knew she was dying and went after a doctor, met Ella Watson, flirted with her and took her to the “Admiral Cafe” and bought her a “wine supper.” When he returned his wife was dead. It has often been said by women in a position to know, that “an old fool is the worst fool of all,” and Captain Seabergh was a living proof that this statement was true to the letter. In the language of the street, Ella Watson “worked him for all he was worth.” He gave her hundred dollar bills, bought her diamonds and pearls and fine dresses, and kept the wolf from Mr. and Mrs. Watson’s door for many moons.
Chapter V THE “WAITER”
Jerry Stratton was born in New York City, where his father and mother also first saw the light of day. His mother’s maternal parents were Long Island Shinnecock Indians, his father’s parents being full blooded Virginians of direct African parentage. He was thirty years old at the time he was introduced to the reader in our opening chapter. He was a graduate of the Brooklyn High School, and had been a law student. He never finished his law course, as the alluring money making position at the “Admiral Hotel” (where he first went for the summer to earn his winter’s school money) made him a slave of the “almighty dollar.” He was an up-to-date New York City man, no better and no worse than the average man, black or white.
He is the hero, not the angel, of this story, as it has no angels in it. This is not a Sunday school story, although it is a Christmas one. At the time of our writing there were few angels in New York City; human nature and the devil had “cornered the market” in angels.
This romance is written something on the Emile Zola style, to wit: It deals in life as found to-day in the United States, and shows some of the true relationships of the two races. It is an attempt to prove that the white people of the country (the South especially) are not as pure as they paint themselves, nor the black people as immoral and as bad as the “white folks” paint them.
Chapter VI KEEPING ENGAGEMENTS
After the woman and her husband left the Admiral Cafe, she hurried him towards the Grand Central depot. He remarked on the way: “Ella, I don’t think I’ll go to Bridgeport for that job, but try and get one here; I don’t want to be so far away from you.” The woman looked at him with a firm, commanding look, and replied: “Well, I think you will go there on the next train, or go to the devil. I am not going to house and feed you any longer. You have got to hustle or starve, as my dream of love is over. Here goes your train,” and she almost pushed him on the car. She waited until the train left the depot and then hurried down to Parker’s Cafe to meet Capt. Seabergh.
He was on time waiting. They entered Parker’s, where the old man ordered a private dining room and a “wine supper” at a cost of $25. After the supper and the wine had been served the old man (we started to call him “old fool,” but our literary position forbids us from so doing) upon his knees, pleaded to her to leave her husband and go with him. Leave him honorably if she would, (that is, get a divorce) or dishonorably if she must. His seemingly logic was thus: “Now Ella, you are too pretty, too young and too intelligent to spend your time with that beggar you call your husband. He is a man far below your standard, and it is a problem to me how you ever married him. Yes, it is the greatest problem of my life. Now, little girl, listen to me; ‘shake’ him—get a divorce from him or leave him in any way, honorable or dishonorable, and marry or live with me, and you will never want for this world’s goods or pleasures, whether good or bad. What do you say, little girl?”
Ella laughed the laugh of a sharp “woman of the street” who knows her business, and remarked: “Oh you old sinner! Why is it you old ‘lobsters’ are always running after young girls almost young enough to be your granddaughters?”
“Love for ‘the young and beautiful,’ together with the incurable human nature we can’t curb, my dear,” was the old man’s reply.
“I want some money to get a new dress and to spend. Give it to me now and to-night I will, upon my word, seriously think over your suggestion,” said Ella.
“How much do you want, little girl,” asked the old man, as he pulled out his well filled pocket book.
“Not much, only fifty dollars in small bills,” was the reply.
He counted out fifty dollars and handed the same to her. She secreted the money in her stocking, then looked at the clock and remarked: “Well, I must go; I promised my husband to be home at twelve o’clock, and here it is half past the hour; will see you tomorrow night—bye, bye,” and she arose.
“But, little girl, you know—”
“No ‘buts,’ I must go; remember I must spend some time with my husband,” she remarked as she kissed the old man and hurried out to meet the colored waiter.
She boarded a Sixth Avenue street car and rode to Thirty-third street, where she found the colored waiter waiting with an engaged cab. She entered the cab before the driver saw her race and color, and having previously received his instructions, the driver drove to the house in West Sixteenth Street.
The front parlor was lighted when they went up the steps. The waiter rang the bell three times, when the lights at once went out, after which he took out of his pocket a key chain with a bunch of keys and picked out one, opened the front door and entered the dark parlor.
“Is that you Mr. Stratton,” asked a voice from the hall.
“Yes mam, Mom,” was the reply.
“Well go up to your rooms, they are ready.”
With this information they walked up to the parlor and alcove above the ground floor, the best and most expensive rooms in the house. After taking off their coats and hats, Jerry (the waiter) remarked: “There is no place like home.”
He rang the bell, and when a servant knocked and the door was opened, he remarked: “Tell Mom to send up a half dozen bottles of Peel’s beer, two good cigars, (two for [a] quarter), a broiled chicken, a box of sardines, a bottle of ‘Old Crow’ whiskey and a package of cigarettes, and have them charged to me.”
“Oh, Jerry!” said the woman, “don’t have them charged to us, that looks so small for us.” Turning to the servant, she said: “Here Sarah, tell ‘Mom’ to take it all out of this ten dollar bill, and tell her to have a drink on me—I mean Mr. Stratton—and take out a half dollar ‘tip’ for yourself, Sarah.”
Sarah did as she was directed, and soon returned with the several articles and the scant remaining change from the ten dollar bill, when she retired and left the couple “alone in their glory” of disgrace.
After the better half of the food and liquor had been consumed, the colored waiter (who we will hereafter call by his name—Jerry Stratton) lit a cigar, then threw himself on the sofa, while the woman took a seat on a pillow on the floor near his head. She was also smoking—a Turkish cigarette—the kind that nine out of ten young white women of Greater New York smoke.
She smiled as she looked into her companion’s face as she remarked: “Say, Jerry, that old ‘lobster’ wants me to run away with him. Ha! ha! the old fool. He wants me to go out West with him—to California. He says he will give me all the money I want, and—”
“Why, that’s dead easy; get a couple of thousands in cold cash from him, go
with him as far as Chicago and then shake him, and come back to New York to me.”
“I never thought of that, Jerry, I will do it.”
“Say, you are dead slow, Ella. If I were a pretty girl like you—well say, I wouldn’t do a thing to those old hay seeds.”
Before morning the plot was completed. Ella Watson was to get all the cash she could get from the old man, get him to purchase two tickets to Oakland, California, desert him at Chicago and return to New York to her colored lover, which plan was carried out to the letter.
Chapter VII THE PLOT’S CONSUMMATION
What story is not full of woman’s falsehood?
the sex is all a sea of wide destruction;
We are vent’rous barks, that leave our home
For some sure dangers which their smiles conceal.
—LEE.
Ella Watson went as far as Chicago with the old man; during the distance from New York to Chicago she blackmailed him into giving her two thousand dollars in small greenbacks. When she got to Chicago she “jumped” the train and returned to New York to her colored lover, Jerry Stratton. The old man was miles west of Chicago before he missed her, as she left him to go to the ladies dressing room to comb her hair (so she said.) He did not then realize that he had been “done.” The colored Pullman car porter told him that he saw a lady running after the train pulled out of Chicago, and the old man concluded she had left the car and did not return before it started on its California journey. He expected her to follow on the next through train, but she did not. After he had been in Oakland, California two weeks, the truth dawned upon him.
When Ella Watson returned to New York she gave the money to her colored lover, who was diplomatic enough to immediately give it back to her, with the remark: “No, Ella, you keep it; you are the ‘banker’ of this firm, I am only the ‘broker.’ You hold the money. I’ll do the rest, ha! ha!”
For five years Ella Watson and Jerry Stratton lived together in what they called “bliss.” Woman is inconstant; man is changeable. The man of the world who is living an immoral life soon tires of his female toy and gets another one; the woman of the world—woman like—is never true to the man she is supposed to love. She has other toys with which she plays, but—she is careful not to let “a good thing” slip through her fingers. Ella Watson was “only a woman,” with all the passions of womanhood of her class, and she rightly guessed that Stratton would soon tire of her, and unless she had some legal hold on him, he would leave her, she therefore resolved to marry him. New York State—God’s country—a man or woman can marry the person they want, regardless of “race, color or previous condition.” Ella Watson resolved to marry Jerry Stratton. In order to do so she was first obliged to get a divorce from her white husband. In order to do this she took a female companion in confidence—got her to lure Watson to New York City from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to the “Admiral Hotel,” where the woman and Watson registered as “Mr. Amos B. Clark and wife.” Soon after they had retired, Ella Watson and three witnesses (two of whom were detectives and the third one Jerry Stratton, her lover) broke in Watson’s room and got the needful evidence for a divorce—which she got and married her colored lover. She was now Stratton’s full-fledged wife with all of a New York state wife’s rights. Jerry Stratton borrowed five hundred dollars from his wife the day after they were married and “played the races,” winning nine hundred dollars more, all of which he gave her, with the exception of one hundred dollars. With this he played poker and won three hundred dollars more. He then concluded to give up his position at the “Admiral Hotel” and live the life of a sport, but he was afraid his wife (who had all the coin) would treat him as a dependent of charity. The problem of his mind was: “To leave work or not to leave.” It was solved for him by the hotel burning down, or more properly speaking burning out, one morning when there was another fire in the same district and the engines were late in getting there. They moved in a “flat” house occupied by white people in One Hundred and Twenty-sixth street, West.
When they first moved in the flat which was a ground (or first floor one), and the neighbors saw Stratton’s dark complexion, they raised an uproar at the idea of living under the same roof with a “nigger,” but when Mrs. Stratton told them that she was Spanish and her husband a native of Cuba, who was seldom at home on account of his business, they accepted the situation and tried to be “chummy” neighbors. They did not have the opportunity to carry out their program, as the Stratton’s were hardly ever home. They rented the flat, which they furnished in great style, simply to have a home, or more properly speaking, an asylum, where they could sleep one or two nights in the week when not elsewhere having “a good time.”
Chapter VIII A VISIT TO THE “NEW SOUTH”
By personal agreement, Mr. and Mrs. Stratton agreed not to recognize each other when it was to their financial interests not to do so. In other words, they agreed that he would not recognize her if he met her on the street with a white person (male or female) that he did not know and she was not to recognize him if she met him on the street with a colored man (she drew the line at a colored woman) and he, fool-like or man-like, accepted the terms. About a year after this agreement, she went to the Grand Music Hall with a white man where, during the play, the song, “The Old Oaken Bucket” was sung, which aroused in her heart a desire to visit the scenes of her childhood.
When she returned home she told her husband—Jerry Stratton of her desire and intentions to visit South Carolina and asked him to go with her.
He accepted. He was not well read upon the social conditions south of the Mason and Dixon Line, [since] he was of northern birth. He did not know that he was going into a lion’s den of race prejudice, into a furnace of social fire, into the home of southern Confederacy, into the bed of rebellion, into the mouth of hell, into the devil’s country instead of New York, God’s country, that he was about to leave. Love or admiration for a woman makes a man blind as to the future, and—Jerry Stratton was blind. They secured Pullman car service to Knoxville, Tennessee, where they transferred to a Jim Crow line to Charleston, South Carolina. He was not aware of the change, as he made the acquaintance of a sporty colored man on the train, who led him into what he concluded was the smoking car, but which was in fact the Jim Crow car. As they were playing poker for money, and Stratton was (by fraud) winning, he did not notice that he was in a Jim Crow car and in ignorant bliss reached Charleston, S.C., twenty miles south of C___. During which time he won over three hundred dollars. When they reached Charleston, he and his white wife parted, by a suggestion of his own. He went with his new found friend to a den of vice and she to a fashionable hotel. He won about three hundred dollars at the card table, enough to pay for their visit South. She had a good time in Charleston, as a Northern lady. They then prepared to visit C___ the home of her childhood. They hired a “hack” the Southern name for a broken down cab, or carriage, which was a hack indeed, drove to C___. His new found friend also went with him to C___. There Stratton and his wife parted, by agreement. Before he left New York City, he purchased several Remington and Winchester rifles, double barrel shotguns and a goodly supply of bird and bear shot and powder, all of which he soon found use for.
After trying to hunt on posted land for three days, during which time he learned the civil, social and political prejudice against his people, he gave it up as a bad job.
During this time his wife had been stopping at the farm of her great uncle’s, five miles from the cross-road hamlet of C___ in the township bearing the same name. During her three days’ stay at her great uncle’s house, she learned the mistake she had made in leaving New York City, God’s country, and revisiting C___, the home of her childhood, the devil’s land, or she saw her mistake in bringing with her, her Negro husband. Both husband and wife, without consultation or knowledge of each other, resolved to get back home at once—together if they could, separate if they must.
He engaged lodgings under the roof of a two-room log cabin, the home of
the Negro who had acted as their guide, or protector, during their hunt on forbidden or posted ground. Jerry Stratton and his wife met, and resolved to return to New York City. “Jerry,” she said, “I fear grave trouble for us, or at least you, as the prejudice against interracial social relations are as bitter here as they were one hundred years ago, however, as I led you into this trap I will get you out of it or—we will, more properly speaking, get out of it together. We will stop at your boarding house, at Uncle Tom’s for the next few days and then quietly return to New York. Remember my love, [whatever happens,] I will live or die with you.”
They passed the next four days in what the romantic author would call “Love’s Young Dreams,” or what the author of this story calls “blind love.” It is a surprising fact to those who do not know the working of the rural districts, how news and gossip can fly so fast in a section of the country where there are no telegraphs or telephones. In three days it was known throughout C___ township, a radius of ten miles, that Nat Forrester’s great niece was living with a “nigger” from the North below the village of C___, in the log cabin of old “Uncle Tom Tatum,” and of course the righteous (?) indignation of the country folks was aroused to action, and old man Forrester was told to talk to the girl and get her to leave the “nigger” after which the best citizens in the community would lynch the “nigger” and report it as a rape case for the good of the community.
A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories Page 12