The Marrow of Tradition · Chapter 5 (1/2)

V

A Journey Southward

As the southbound train was leaving the station at Philadelphia, a gentleman took his seat in the single sleeping-car attached to the train, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. He hung up his hat and opened his newspaper, in which he remained absorbed for a quarter of an hour. 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, who had been on the car since it had left New York, rose from his seat upon perceiving the other’s glance, and came down the aisle.

“How do you do, Dr. Burns?” he said, stopping beside the seat of the Philadelphia 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 of cordial 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 me all about yourself⁠—what you’re doing, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. I’m delighted to meet you, and to see you looking so well⁠—and so prosperous.”

“I deserve no credit for either, sir,” returned the other, as he took the proffered seat, “for I inherited both health and prosperity. It is a fortunate chance that permits me to meet you.”

The two acquaintances, thus opportunely thrown together so that they might while away in conversation the tedium of their journey, represented very different and yet very similar types of manhood. A celebrated traveler, after many years spent in barbarous or savage lands, has said that among all varieties of mankind the similarities are vastly more important and fundamental than the differences. Looking at these two men with the American eye, the differences would perhaps be the more striking, or at least the more immediately apparent, for the first was white and the second black, or, more correctly speaking, brown; it was even a light brown, but both his swarthy complexion and his curly hair revealed what has been described in the laws of some of our states as a “visible admixture” of African blood.

Having disposed of this difference, and having observed that the white man 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 from their faces and their manners to be men of culture and accustomed to the society of cultivated people. They were both handsome men, the elder representing a fine type of Anglo-Saxon, as the term is used in speaking of our composite white population; while the mulatto’s erect form, broad shoulders, clear eyes, fine teeth, and pleasingly moulded features showed nowhere any sign of that degeneration which the pessimist so sadly maintains is the inevitable heritage of mixed races.

As to their personal relations, it has already appeared that they were members of the same profession. In past years they had been teacher and pupil. Dr. Alvin Burns was professor in the famous medical college where Miller had attended lectures. The professor had taken an interest in his only colored pupil, to whom he had been attracted by his earnestness of purpose, his evident talent, and his excellent manners and fine physique. It was in part due to Dr. Burns’s friendship that Miller had won a scholarship which had enabled him, without drawing too heavily upon his father’s resources, to spend in Europe, studying in the hospitals of Paris and Vienna, the two most delightful years of his life. The same influence had strengthened his natural inclination toward operative surgery, in which Dr. Burns was a distinguished specialist of national reputation.

Miller’s father, Adam Miller, had been a thrifty colored man, the son of a slave, who, in the olden time, had bought himself with money which he had earned and saved, over and above what he had paid his master for his time. Adam Miller had inherited his father’s thrift, as well as his trade, which was that of a stevedore, or contractor for the loading and unloading of vessels at the port of Wellington. In the flush turpentine days following a few years after the civil war, he had made money. His savings, shrewdly invested, had by constant accessions become a competence. He had brought up his eldest son to the trade; the other he had given a professional education, in the proud hope that his children or his grandchildren might be gentlemen in the town where their ancestors 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 had promptly spent part of his inheritance in founding a hospital, to which was to be added a training school for nurses, and in time perhaps a medical college and a school of pharmacy. He had been strongly tempted to leave the South, and seek a home for his family and a career for himself in the freer North, where race antagonism was less keen, or at least less oppressive, or in Europe, where he had never found his color work to his disadvantage. But his people had needed him, and he had wished to help them, and had sought by means of this institution to contribute to their uplifting. As he now informed Dr. Burns, he was returning from New York, where he had been in order to purchase equipment for his new hospital, which would soon be ready for the reception of patients.

“How much I can accomplish I do not know,” said Miller, “but I’ll do what I can. There are eight or nine million of us, and it will take a great deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump.”

“It is a great problem, Miller, the future of your race,” returned the other, “a tremendously interesting problem. It is a serial story which we are all reading, and which grows in vital interest with each successive installment. It is not only your problem, but ours. Your race must come up or drag ours down.”

“We shall come up,” declared Miller; “slowly and painfully, perhaps, but we shall win our way. If our race had made as much progress everywhere as they have made in Wellington, the problem would be well on the way toward 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’s throat. 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 the Medical Gazette, the other day, an account of a very interesting operation of yours. I felt proud to number you among my pupils. It was a remarkable case⁠—a rare case. I must certainly have you with me in this one.”

“I shall be delighted, sir,” returned Miller, “if it is agreeable to all concerned.”

Several hours were passed in pleasant conversation while the train sped rapidly southward. They were already far down in Virginia, and had stopped at a station beyond Richmond, when the conductor entered the car.

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

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

“Let’s sit here, Miller,” he said, having selected a seat near the rear of the car and deposited his suitcase in a rack. “It’s on the shady side.”

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, he paused at the seat occupied by the two doctors, glanced interrogatively at Miller, and then spoke to Dr. Burns, who sat in the end of the seat nearest the aisle.

“This man is with you?” he asked, indicating Miller with a slight side movement of his head, and a keen glance in his direction.

“Certainly,” replied Dr. Burns curtly, and with some surprise. “Don’t you see that he is?”

The conductor passed on. Miller paid no apparent attention to this little interlude, though no syllable had escaped him. He resumed the conversation where it had been broken off, but nevertheless followed with his eyes the conductor, who stopped at a seat near the forward end of the car, and engaged in conversation with a man whom Miller had not hitherto noticed.

As this passenger turned his head and looked back toward Miller, the latter saw a broad-shouldered, burly white man, and recognized in his square-cut jaw, his coarse, firm mouth, and the single gray eye with which he swept Miller for an instant with a scornful glance, a well-known character of Wellington, with whom the reader has already made acquaintance in these pages. Captain McBane wore a frock coat and a slouch hat; several buttons of his vest were unbuttoned, and his solitaire diamond blazed in his soiled shirtfront like the headlight of a 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 had hoped, on account of his friend’s presence, that it might be avoided.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the conductor, addressing Dr. Burns, “but did I understand you to say that this man was your servant?”

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

“It’s very much my affair,” returned the conductor, somewhat nettled at this questioning of his authority. “I’m sorry to part friends, but the law of Virginia does not permit colored passengers to ride in the white cars. You’ll have to go forward to the next coach,” he added, addressing Miller this time.

“I have paid my fare on the sleeping-car, where the separate-car law does not apply,” remonstrated Miller.

“I can’t help that. You can doubtless get your money back from the sleeping-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 put there 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 in white upon a dark background, typical, one might suppose, of the distinction 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 stay right here.”

“I’m sorry to discommode you,” returned the conductor, “but there’s no use kicking. It’s the law of Virginia, and I am bound by it as well as you. I have already come near losing my place because of not enforcing it, and I can take no more such chances, since I have a family to support.”

“And my friend has his rights to maintain,” returned Dr. Burns with determination. “There is a vital principle at stake in the matter.”

“Really, sir,” argued the conductor, who was a man of peace and not fond of controversy, “there’s no use talking⁠—he absolutely cannot ride in this car.”

“How can you prevent it?” asked Dr. Burns, lapsing into the argumentative stage.

“The law gives me the right to remove him by force. I can call on the train crew to assist me, or on the other passengers. If I should choose to put him off the train entirely, in the middle of a swamp, he would have no redress⁠—the law so provides. If I did not wish to use force, I could simply switch this car off at the next siding, transfer the white passengers to another, and leave you and your friend in possession until you were arrested and fined or imprisoned.”

“What he says is absolutely true, doctor,” interposed Miller at this point. “It is the law, and we are powerless to resist it. If we made any trouble, it would merely delay your journey and imperil a life at the other end. I’ll go into the other car.”

“You shall not go alone,” said Dr. Burns stoutly, rising in his turn. “A place that is too good for you is not good enough for me. I will sit wherever you do.”

“I’m sorry again,” said the conductor, who had quite recovered his equanimity, and calmly conscious of his power, could scarcely restrain an amused smile; “I dislike to interfere, but white passengers are not permitted to ride in the colored car.”

“This is an outrage,” declared Dr. Burns, “a d⁠⸺⁠d outrage! You are curtailing the rights, not only of colored people, but of white men as well. I shall sit where I please!”

“I warn you, sir,” rejoined the conductor, hardening again, “that the law will be enforced. The beauty of the system lies in its strict impartiality⁠—it applies to both races alike.”

“And is equally infamous in both cases,” declared Dr. Burns. “I shall immediately take steps”⁠—

“Never mind, doctor,” interrupted Miller, soothingly, “it’s only for a little 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 way for Miller to pass him.

The colored doctor took up his valise and crossed the platform to the car ahead. It was an old car, with faded upholstery, from which the stuffing projected here and there through torn places. Apparently the floor had not been swept for several days. The dust lay thick upon the window sills, and the water-cooler, from which he essayed to get a drink, was filled with stale water which had made no recent acquaintance with ice. There was no other passenger in the car, and Miller occupied himself in making a rough calculation of what it would cost the Southern railroads to haul a whole car for every colored passenger. It was expensive, to say the least; it would be cheaper, and quite as considerate 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 this piece of legislation had contrived, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, that not merely should the passengers be separated by the color line, but that the reason for this division should be kept constantly in mind. Lest a white man should forget that he was white⁠—not a very likely contingency⁠—these cards would keep him constantly admonished of the fact; should a colored person endeavor, for a moment, to lose sight of his disability, these staring signs would remind him continually that between him and the rest of mankind not of his own color, there was by law a great gulf fixed.

Having composed himself, Miller had opened a newspaper, and was deep in an editorial which set forth in glowing language the inestimable advantages which would follow to certain recently acquired islands by the introduction of American liberty, when the rear door of the car opened to give entrance to Captain George McBane, who took a seat near the door and lit a cigar. Miller knew him quite well by sight and by reputation, and detested him as heartily. He represented the aggressive, offensive element among the white people of the New South, who made it hard for a negro to maintain his self-respect or to enjoy even the rights conceded to colored men by Southern laws. McBane had undoubtedly identified him to the conductor in the other car. Miller had no desire to thrust himself upon the society of white people, which, indeed, to one who had traveled so much and so far, was no novelty; but he very naturally resented being at this late day⁠—the law had been in operation only a few months⁠—branded and tagged and set apart from the rest of mankind upon the public highways, like an unclean thing. Nevertheless, he preferred even this to the exclusive society of Captain George McBane.