The Marrow of Tradition

by Charles W. Chesnutt

  V

  A JOURNEY SOUTHWARD

  As the south-bound train was leaving the station at Philadelphia, agentleman took his seat in the single sleeping-car attached to thetrain, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. He hung up his hat andopened his newspaper, in which he remained absorbed for a quarter of anhour. When the train had left the city behind, he threw the paper aside,and looked around at the other occupants of the car. One of these, whohad been on the car since it had left New York, rose from his seat uponperceiving the other's glance, and came down the aisle.

  "How do you do, Dr. Burns?" he said, stopping beside the seat of thePhiladelphia passenger.

  The gentleman looked up at the speaker with an air of surprise, which,after the first keen, incisive glance, gave place to an expression ofcordial recognition.

  "Why, it's Miller!" he exclaimed, rising and giving the other his hand,"William Miller--Dr. Miller, of course. Sit down, Miller, and tell meall about yourself,--what you're doing, where you've been, and whereyou're going. I'm delighted to meet you, and to see you looking sowell--and so prosperous."

  "I deserve no credit for either, sir," returned the other, as he tookthe proffered seat, "for I inherited both health and prosperity. It is afortunate chance that permits me to meet you."

  The two acquaintances, thus opportunely thrown together so that theymight while away in conversation the tedium of their journey,represented very different and yet very similar types of manhood. Acelebrated traveler, after many years spent in barbarous or savagelands, has said that among all varieties of mankind the similarities arevastly more important and fundamental than the differences. Looking atthese two men with the American eye, the differences would perhaps bethe more striking, or at least the more immediately apparent, for thefirst was white and the second black, or, more correctly speaking,brown; it was even a light brown, but both his swarthy complexion andhis curly hair revealed what has been described in the laws of some ofour states as a "visible admixture" of African blood.

  Having disposed of this difference, and having observed that the whiteman was perhaps fifty years of age and the other not more than thirty,it may be said that they were both tall and sturdy, both well dressed,the white man with perhaps a little more distinction; both seemed fromtheir faces and their manners to be men of culture and accustomed to thesociety of cultivated people. They were both handsome men, the elderrepresenting a fine type of Anglo-Saxon, as the term is used in speakingof our composite white population; while the mulatto's erect form, broadshoulders, clear eyes, fine teeth, and pleasingly moulded featuresshowed nowhere any sign of that degeneration which the pessimist sosadly maintains is the inevitable heritage of mixed races.

  As to their personal relations, it has already appeared that they weremembers of the same profession. In past years they had been teacher andpupil. Dr. Alvin Burns was professor in the famous medical collegewhere Miller had attended lectures. The professor had taken an interestin his only colored pupil, to whom he had been attracted by hisearnestness of purpose, his evident talent, and his excellent mannersand fine physique. It was in part due to Dr. Burns's friendship thatMiller had won a scholarship which had enabled him, without drawing tooheavily upon his father's resources, to spend in Europe, studying in thehospitals of Paris and Vienna, the two most delightful years of hislife. The same influence had strengthened his natural inclination towardoperative surgery, in which Dr. Burns was a distinguished specialist ofnational reputation.

  Miller's father, Adam Miller, had been a thrifty colored man, the son ofa slave, who, in the olden time, had bought himself with money which hehad earned and saved, over and above what he had paid his master for histime. Adam Miller had inherited his father's thrift, as well as histrade, which was that of a stevedore, or contractor for the loading andunloading of vessels at the port of Wellington. In the flush turpentinedays following a few years after the civil war, he had made money. Hissavings, shrewdly invested, had by constant accessions become acompetence. He had brought up his eldest son to the trade; the other hehad given a professional education, in the proud hope that his childrenor his grandchildren might be gentlemen in the town where theirancestors had once been slaves.

  Upon his father's death, shortly after Dr. Miller's return from Europe,and a year or two before the date at which this story opens, he hadpromptly spent part of his inheritance in founding a hospital, to whichwas to be added a training school for nurses, and in time perhaps amedical college and a school of pharmacy. He had been strongly temptedto leave the South, and seek a home for his family and a career forhimself in the freer North, where race antagonism was less keen, or atleast less oppressive, or in Europe, where he had never found his colorwork to his disadvantage. But his people had needed him, and he hadwished to help them, and had sought by means of this institution tocontribute to their uplifting. As he now informed Dr. Burns, he wasreturning from New York, where he had been in order to purchaseequipment for his new hospital, which would soon be ready for thereception of patients.

  "How much I can accomplish I do not know," said Miller, "but I'll dowhat I can. There are eight or nine million of us, and it will take agreat deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump."

  "It is a great problem, Miller, the future of your race," returned theother, "a tremendously interesting problem. It is a serial story whichwe are all reading, and which grows in vital interest with eachsuccessive installment. It is not only your problem, but ours. Your racemust come up or drag ours down."

  "We shall come up," declared Miller; "slowly and painfully, perhaps, butwe shall win our way. If our race had made as much progress everywhereas they have made in Wellington, the problem would be well on the waytoward solution."

  "Wellington?" exclaimed Dr. Burns. "That's where I'm going. A Dr. Price,of Wellington, has sent for me to perform an operation on a child'sthroat. Do you know Dr. Price?"

  "Quite well," replied Miller, "he is a friend of mine."

  "So much the better. I shall want you to assist me. I read in theMedical Gazette, the other day, an account of a very interestingoperation of yours. I felt proud to number you among my pupils. It was aremarkable case--a rare case. I must certainly have you with me in thisone."

  "I shall be delighted, sir," returned Miller, "if it is agreeable to allconcerned."

  Several hours were passed in pleasant conversation while the train spedrapidly southward. They were already far down in Virginia, and hadstopped at a station beyond Richmond, when the conductor entered thecar.

  "All passengers," he announced, "will please transfer to the day coachesahead. The sleeper has a hot box, and must be switched off here."

  Dr. Burns and Miller obeyed the order, the former leading the way intothe coach immediately in front of the sleeping-car.

  "Let's sit here, Miller," he said, having selected a seat near the rearof the car and deposited his suitcase in a rack. "It's on the shadyside."

  Miller stood a moment hesitatingly, but finally took the seat indicated,and a few minutes later the journey was again resumed.

  When the train conductor made his round after leaving the station, hepaused at the seat occupied by the two doctors, glanced interrogativelyat Miller, and then spoke to Dr. Burns, who sat in the end of the seatnearest the aisle.

  "This man is with you?" he asked, indicating Miller with a slight sidemovement of his head, and a keen glance in his direction.

  "Certainly," replied Dr. Burns curtly, and with some surprise. "Don'tyou see that he is?"

  The conductor passed on. Miller paid no apparent attention to thislittle interlude, though no syllable had escaped him. He resumed theconversation where it had been broken off, but nevertheless followedwith his eyes the conductor, who stopped at a seat near the forward endof the car, and engaged in conversation with a man whom Miller had nothitherto noticed.

  As this passenger turned his head and looked back toward Miller, thelatter saw a broad-shouldered, burly white man, and recognized in hissquare-cut jaw, his coar
se, firm mouth, and the single gray eye withwhich he swept Miller for an instant with a scornful glance, awell-known character of Wellington, with whom the reader has alreadymade acquaintance in these pages. Captain McBane wore a frock coat and aslouch hat; several buttons of his vest were unbuttoned, and hissolitaire diamond blazed in his soiled shirt-front like the headlight ofa locomotive.

  The conductor in his turn looked back at Miller, and retraced his steps.Miller braced himself for what he feared was coming, though he hadhoped, on account of his friend's presence, that it might be avoided.

  "Excuse me, sir," said the conductor, addressing Dr. Burns, "but did Iunderstand you to say that this man was your servant?"

  "No, indeed!" replied Dr. Burns indignantly. "The gentleman is not myservant, nor anybody's servant, but is my friend. But, by the way, sincewe are on the subject, may I ask what affair it is of yours?"

  "It's very much my affair," returned the conductor, somewhat nettled atthis questioning of his authority. "I'm sorry to part _friends_, but thelaw of Virginia does not permit colored passengers to ride in the whitecars. You'll have to go forward to the next coach," he added, addressingMiller this time.

  "I have paid my fare on the sleeping-car, where the separate-car lawdoes not apply," remonstrated Miller.

  "I can't help that. You can doubtless get your money back from thesleeping-car company. But this is a day coach, and is distinctly marked'White,' as you must have seen before you sat down here. The sign is putthere for that purpose."

  He indicated a large card neatly framed and hung at the end of the car,containing the legend, "White," in letters about a foot long, painted inwhite upon a dark background, typical, one might suppose, of thedistinction thereby indicated.

  "You shall not stir a step, Miller," exclaimed Dr. Burns wrathfully."This is an outrage upon a citizen of a free country. You shall stayright here."

  "I'm sorry to discommode you," returned the conductor, "but there's nouse kicking. It's the law of Virginia, and I am bound by it as well asyou. I have already come near losing my place because of not enforcingit, and I can take no more such chances, since I have a family tosupport."

  "And my friend has his rights to maintain," returned Dr. Burns withdetermination. "There is a vital principle at stake in the matter."

  "Really, sir," argued the conductor, who was a man of peace and not fondof controversy, "there's no use talking--he absolutely cannot ride inthis car."

  "How can you prevent it?" asked Dr. Burns, lapsing into theargumentative stage.

  "The law gives me the right to remove him by force. I can call on thetrain crew to assist me, or on the other passengers. If I should chooseto put him off the train entirely, in the middle of a swamp, he wouldhave no redress--the law so provides. If I did not wish to use force, Icould simply switch this car off at the next siding, transfer the whitepassengers to another, and leave you and your friend in possession untilyou were arrested and fined or imprisoned."

  "What he says is absolutely true, doctor," interposed Miller at thispoint. "It is the law, and we are powerless to resist it. If we made anytrouble, it would merely delay your journey and imperil a life at theother end. I'll go into the other car."

  "You shall not go alone," said Dr. Burns stoutly, rising in his turn. "Aplace that is too good for you is not good enough for me. I will sitwherever you do."

  "I'm sorry again," said the conductor, who had quite recovered hisequanimity, and calmly conscious of his power, could scarcely restrainan amused smile; "I dislike to interfere, but white passengers are notpermitted to ride in the colored car."

  "This is an outrage," declared Dr. Burns, "a d----d outrage! You arecurtailing the rights, not only of colored people, but of white men aswell. I shall sit where I please!"

  "I warn you, sir," rejoined the conductor, hardening again, "that thelaw will be enforced. The beauty of the system lies in its strictimpartiality--it applies to both races alike."

  "And is equally infamous in both cases," declared Dr. Burns. "I shallimmediately take steps"--

  "Never mind, doctor," interrupted Miller, soothingly, "it's only for alittle while. I'll reach my destination just as surely in the other car,and we can't help it, anyway. I'll see you again at Wellington."

  Dr. Burns, finding resistance futile, at length acquiesced and made wayfor Miller to pass him.

  The colored doctor took up his valise and crossed the platform to thecar ahead. It was an old car, with faded upholstery, from which thestuffing projected here and there through torn places. Apparently thefloor had not been swept for several days. The dust lay thick upon thewindow sills, and the water-cooler, from which he essayed to get adrink, was filled with stale water which had made no recent acquaintancewith ice. There was no other passenger in the car, and Miller occupiedhimself in making a rough calculation of what it would cost the Southernrailroads to haul a whole car for every colored passenger. It wasexpensive, to say the least; it would be cheaper, and quite asconsiderate of their feelings, to make the negroes walk.

  The car was conspicuously labeled at either end with large cards,similar to those in the other car, except that they bore the word"Colored" in black letters upon a white background. The author of thispiece of legislation had contrived, with an ingenuity worthy of a bettercause, that not merely should the passengers be separated by the colorline, but that the reason for this division should be kept constantly inmind. Lest a white man should forget that he was white,--not a verylikely contingency,--these cards would keep him constantly admonished ofthe fact; should a colored person endeavor, for a moment, to lose sightof his disability, these staring signs would remind him continually thatbetween him and the rest of mankind not of his own color, there was bylaw a great gulf fixed.

  Having composed himself, Miller had opened a newspaper, and was deep inan editorial which set forth in glowing language the inestimableadvantages which would follow to certain recently acquired islands bythe introduction of American liberty, when the rear door of the caropened to give entrance to Captain George McBane, who took a seat nearthe door and lit a cigar. Miller knew him quite well by sight and byreputation, and detested him as heartily. He represented the aggressive,offensive element among the white people of the New South, who made ithard for a negro to maintain his self-respect or to enjoy even therights conceded to colored men by Southern laws. McBane had undoubtedlyidentified him to the conductor in the other car. Miller had no desireto thrust himself upon the society of white people, which, indeed, toone who had traveled so much and so far, was no novelty; but he verynaturally resented being at this late day--the law had been in operationonly a few months--branded and tagged and set apart from the rest ofmankind upon the public highways, like an unclean thing. Nevertheless,he preferred even this to the exclusive society of Captain GeorgeMcBane.

  "Porter," he demanded of the colored train attache who passed throughthe car a moment later, "is this a smoking car for white men?"

  "No, suh," replied the porter, "but they comes in here sometimes, whenthey ain' no cullud ladies on the kyar."

  "Well, I have paid first-class fare, and I object to that man's smokingin here. You tell him to go out."

  "I'll tell the conductor, suh," returned the porter in a low tone. "I'd jus' as soon talk ter the devil as ter that man."

  The white man had spread himself over two seats, and was smokingvigorously, from time to time spitting carelessly in the aisle, when theconductor entered the compartment.

  "Captain," said Miller, "this car is plainly marked 'Colored.' I havepaid first-class fare, and I object to riding in a smoking car."

  "All right," returned the conductor, frowning irritably. "I'll speak tohim."

  He walked over to the white passenger, with whom he was evidentlyacquainted, since he addressed him by name.

  "Captain McBane," he said, "it's against the law for you to ride in thenigger car."

  "Who are you talkin' to?" returned the other. "I'll ride where I damnplease."

  "Yes, sir, but the c
olored passenger objects. I'm afraid I'll have toask you to go into the smoking-car."

  "The hell you say!" rejoined McBane. "I'll leave this car when I getgood and ready, and that won't be till I've finished this cigar. See?"

  He was as good as his word. The conductor escaped from the car beforeMiller had time for further expostulation. Finally McBane, having thrownthe stump of his cigar into the aisle and added to the floor a finishingtouch in the way of expectoration, rose and went back into the whitecar.

  Left alone in his questionable glory, Miller buried himself again in hisnewspaper, from which he did not look up until the engine stopped at atank station to take water.

  As the train came to a standstill, a huge negro, covered thickly withdust, crawled off one of the rear trucks unobserved, and ran round therear end of the car to a watering-trough by a neighboring well. Movedeither by extreme thirst or by the fear that his time might be too shortto permit him to draw a bucket of water, he threw himself down by thetrough, drank long and deep, and plunging his head into the water, shookhimself like a wet dog, and crept furtively back to his dangerous perch.

  Miller, who had seen this man from the car window, had noticed a verysingular thing. As the dusty tramp passed the rear coach, he cast towardit a glance of intense ferocity. Up to that moment the man's face, whichMiller had recognized under its grimy coating, had been that of anordinarily good-natured, somewhat reckless, pleasure-loving negro, atpresent rather the worse for wear. The change that now came over itsuggested a concentrated hatred almost uncanny in its murderousness.With awakened curiosity Miller followed the direction of the negro'sglance, and saw that it rested upon a window where Captain McBane satlooking out. When Miller looked back, the negro had disappeared.

  At the next station a Chinaman, of the ordinary laundry type, boardedthe train, and took his seat in the white car without objection. Atanother point a colored nurse found a place with her mistress.

  "White people," said Miller to himself, who had seen these passengersfrom the window, "do not object to the negro as a servant. As thetraditional negro,--the servant,--he is welcomed; as an equal, he isrepudiated."

  Miller was something of a philosopher. He had long ago had theconclusion forced upon him that an educated man of his race, in order tolive comfortably in the United States, must be either a philosopher ora fool; and since he wished to be happy, and was not exactly a fool, hehad cultivated philosophy. By and by he saw a white man, with a dog,enter the rear coach. Miller wondered whether the dog would be allowedto ride with his master, and if not, what disposition would be made ofhim. He was a handsome dog, and Miller, who was fond of animals, wouldnot have objected to the company of a dog, as a dog. He was neverthelessconscious of a queer sensation when he saw the porter take the dog bythe collar and start in his own direction, and felt consciously relievedwhen the canine passenger was taken on past him into the baggage-carahead. Miller's hand was hanging over the arm of his seat, and the dog,an intelligent shepherd, licked it as he passed. Miller was not entirelysure that he would not have liked the porter to leave the dog there; hewas a friendly dog, and seemed inclined to be sociable.

  Toward evening the train drew up at a station where quite a party offarm laborers, fresh from their daily toil, swarmed out from theconspicuously labeled colored waiting-room, and into the car withMiller. They were a jolly, good-natured crowd, and, free from theembarrassing presence of white people, proceeded to enjoy themselvesafter their own fashion. Here an amorous fellow sat with his arm arounda buxom girl's waist. A musically inclined individual--his talents didnot go far beyond inclination--produced a mouth-organ and struck up atune, to which a limber-legged boy danced in the aisle. They were noisy,loquacious, happy, dirty, and malodorous. For a while Miller was amusedand pleased. They were his people, and he felt a certain expansivewarmth toward them in spite of their obvious shortcomings. By and by,however, the air became too close, and he went out upon the platform.For the sake of the democratic ideal, which meant so much to his race,he might have endured the affliction. He could easily imagine thatpeople of refinement, with the power in their hands, might be tempted tostrain the democratic ideal in order to avoid such contact; butpersonally, and apart from the mere matter of racial sympathy, thesepeople were just as offensive to him as to the whites in the other endof the train. Surely, if a classification of passengers on trains was atall desirable, it might be made upon some more logical and consideratebasis than a mere arbitrary, tactless, and, by the very nature ofthings, brutal drawing of a color line. It was a veritable bed ofProcrustes, this standard which the whites had set for the negroes.Those who grew above it must have their heads cut off, figurativelyspeaking,--must be forced back to the level assigned to their race;those who fell beneath the standard set had their necks stretched,literally enough, as the ghastly record in the daily papers gaveconclusive evidence.

  Miller breathed more freely when the lively crowd got off at the nextstation, after a short ride. Moreover, he had a light heart, aconscience void of offense, and was only thirty years old. Hisphilosophy had become somewhat jaded on this journey, but he pulled ittogether for a final effort. Was it not, after all, a wise provision ofnature that had given to a race, destined to a long servitude and a slowemergence therefrom, a cheerfulness of spirit which enabled them tocatch pleasure on the wing, and endure with equanimity the ills thatseemed inevitable? The ability to live and thrive under adversecircumstances is the surest guaranty of the future. The race which atthe last shall inherit the earth--the residuary legatee ofcivilization--will be the race which remains longest upon it. The negrowas here before the Anglo-Saxon was evolved, and his thick lips andheavy-lidded eyes looked out from the inscrutable face of the Sphinxacross the sands of Egypt while yet the ancestors of those who nowoppress him were living in caves, practicing human sacrifice, andpainting themselves with woad--and the negro is here yet.

  "'Blessed are the meek,'" quoted Miller at the end of these consolingreflections, "'for they shall inherit the earth.' If this be true, thenegro may yet come into his estate, for meekness seems to be set apartas his portion."

  The journey came to an end just as the sun had sunk into the west.

  Simultaneously with Miller's exit from the train, a great black figurecrawled off the trucks of the rear car, on the side opposite the stationplatform. Stretching and shaking himself with a free gesture, the blackman, seeing himself unobserved, moved somewhat stiffly round the end ofthe car to the station platform.

  "'Fo de Lawd!" he muttered, "ef I hadn' had a cha'm' life, I'd 'a'never got here on dat ticket, an' dat's a fac'--it sho' am! I kind er'lowed I wuz gone a dozen times, ez it wuz. But I got my job ter do indis worl', an' I knows I ain' gwine ter die 'tel I've 'complished it. Ijes' want one mo' look at dat man, an' den I'll haf ter git somethin'ter eat; fer two raw turnips in twelve hours is slim pickin's fer a maner my size!"