great talent have I neglected?"
Ellen threw her arm over her sister's shoulder. "You have talent, Hertha, you know you have, only you won't recognize it, but keep dancing attendance on that old lady. With a little instruction you would be a skillful dressmaker, an artiste, as the advertisements say. You sew beautifully and have lots of taste, and you've style. With such a gift in any large city you could surely get ahead. You could have custom, too, if you wanted, from our people."
"I don't expect to get ahead."
"But why?"
"I don't know." The girl stopped a moment and then said slowly, "I don't believe I've as much ambition as you. I don't like study. I hate the city, and I'm contented and happy here. When work is over I've you and mother to go to; I belong to you two and I don't want to leave you."
Her face was aflame as she said this, realizing that it was only a partial truth. Her deception made her angry, and she turned in retort upon her sister. "Why does it worry you so that I should love Miss Patty? Are you jealous?"
"You know as well as I do that it isn't that."
"It sounds like that to me. I like my work. Why should I accept a lot of responsibility, set up a shop, which I should hate, or go about making cheap gowns for stout black people when I can stay at home and wait on a sweet, refined person like my mistress?"
The "my mistress" was given with an emphasis that closed the subject. Ellen had said that her sister was not a child like Tom, and for the time at least she must accept the verdict against her.
"Well, chillen," their mother said as they came up to the cabin, "de best o' news, a letter f'om Tom!"
They both were upon her, but Hertha got the letter.
"Mister Lee were walkin' dis-a-way an' bring it ter me. It were kind o' him; he knowed I wan' ter see it mighty quick."
"How short!" Hertha said, reading it through rapidly.
Mammy was at once up in arms for her son. "What done you 'spec'? Dar's de paper civered. He tells 'bout de journey, an' what he gits fer his meals, an' how big de ocean look, an' how he can't rightly say no mo' 'kase de bell done ring fer chapel. Dat a heap, but it ain't much fer waitin' hearts."
"He doesn't say what studies he's taking," Ellen remarked when she had finished with the sheet.
"We're foolish, Mammy," Hertha exclaimed, seeing the disappointment on the old woman's face. "It's a dear letter, and it's Tom's handwriting—I'd know it in Timbuctoo. Oh, how I wish he were here!"
"You sho do, honey; but dere ain't no use in wishin'. Come, git yer supper an' den we-all'll jes' go down to Uncle Eben, an' Granny Rose an' de folks as ain't gittin' letters ebery day."
There was no need to go out. The news of the letter reached the settlement before sundown, and many were the visitors who came to see it and who departed to tell all and more than it contained. It was really a gay evening, and when the three women were left alone they sat up a little longer than usual talking about it.
"Everything all right?" Ellen asked as she kissed her sister good-night.
"Yes," Hertha answered, smiling; but when she was alone in her room the smile left her lips. Did Ellen suspect anything? Probably not, but how strange to have a secret from those at home.
CHAPTER VI
Never before did an October boast so many wonderful mornings. Sometimes it rained in the night, but the rising sun dispersed the clouds and brought a golden day to Hertha's world. And as she went about her tasks, her brief playtime over, she still sensed the fragrant orange grove and moved among the trees, her lover by her side. Deftly helping Miss Patty with her hair or dress, guiding Miss Witherspoon in her embroidery, cheering Pomona through an intricate dinner, his voice was in her ears and his touch upon her cheek. From morning until night was a lovely, precious, fearsome dream.
For there was reality in the dream that brought fear. Her lover wanted so much. She was content to stand on the threshold, but each day he asked that they might enter within the gates. It was hard to resist his pleading. If for a moment he had been rough, if he had endeavored to take by force what she hesitated to give, she could have resisted him; but his gentleness was his power. And each morning as she saw him leave her to go into the world of white men and women, a world as irrevocably closed to her as the world of light is closed to the blind, her fear took form. Would he remain faithful if she failed to give him all that he desired? If she dallied, if she strove to keep him at love's portal, some time he might not be there when she turned from her path to make her way among the orange trees. If that should happen, if he should neglect her, she would die of angry shame. Within her nature there was modesty and self-effacement, but also pride that could not brook a slight. She had never wooed; it had been he who had called, beckoning her from her place among the cabins in the pines. She had not given a glance or said a word to draw him from his favored place; he had come because he loved her beauty and her shy reserve. To hold him and yet not to sacrifice herself. This was the problem, when fear crept into her heart.
She had pushed it from her day after day, but she could not wholly ignore it; and this autumn morning as she sat in church, seemingly intent upon the preacher's word, she told herself that she must decide what she was willing to give. He had pleaded with her to meet him that night within the orange grove, promising to wait for her near the cypress where her world met his. His passion was in the ascendant; he begged her to trust him, to give herself to his keeping.
"An' de mantle ob Elijah was blue wid de blue ob de eternal heaben," cried out the preacher, "an' de linin' was rose wid de blood ob de Lamb."
Could she go? Why did the world give her such a terrible problem? Why, why was she colored! She felt a momentary revulsion to be listening to an ignorant preacher amid these clumsy black folk. It was wicked that a few drops of Negro blood forced her to this seat when she should be yonder with the white people where the clergyman read the beautiful service of the Church of England. Why was she not at Lee Merryvale's side? As Ellen had said, she was no maid; she was his equal, and only those drops of colored blood kept her here. No, not the drops of blood, but the hideous morality of a cruel race.
But the world was here as the white people had made it, and you had to accept it and then decide what you should do. Perhaps he was holding the hymnal now and Miss Witherspoon was singing with him from the same book. There would always be some one like that to come between him and herself. Always a white face, but no whiter than her own; always a world that claimed him and despised her. But if she gave herself to him, if she trusted that he would love and protect her as he so passionately promised; if she left mother and sister and brother for his sake; then no other face would blot out hers. What her life would be she could not picture, but it would not be a life without him.
The service over, she walked with her mother and sister among the cabins that Ellen so loved. The people standing outside their doorways were dressed in their best and a pleasant Sunday air pervaded the place. Every one was decorous, and yet with an undercurrent of jollity; for the sermon had stirred their imaginations, and ahead was a good dinner. Uncle Ebenezer talked with authority of Elijah and eagerly awaited the preacher's presence that he might discuss his theory of the color of the mantle of the prophet. "It were white as de wool ob de Lamb," he declaimed as he saw the man of God in his long black coat walking up to him. "Jes' riccolec', Brudder, de waters dat it smote apart
