So bitter was his despair at the dashing of all his hopes that he failed to analyze Lida's last act. All the world suddenly seemed to have lost its brightness. Youth, so prone to building castles of air, had been busy with Bennet's ambitions and dreams during the past few months, so busy that he had not seemed to be living on earth but on some planet far away, peopled by but two persons. One short half hour had spoiled all his dreams and filled his heart with bitterness. Even her last kiss failed to console him. He seemed to have lost interest in life itself. Instead of ordering the cabman to return him to the dance, Bennet dismissed the man, without so much as a word, after paying him his fee, then began to walk away from the school.
Forgetting that he was one of the committee and his presence was needed to aid with the entertainment, he continued to walk past the campus and along the quiet shadowy streets of the residence section as in a daze. Without realizing what he was doing he turned back after a time and walked toward the college, bitter thoughts coursing through his mind; bitter at the fate that was his; bitter at the loss of the girl he loved and bitter at conditions which up to this time, he had never faced. He was nurtured and reared in an environment which had never before brought the subject of his race or nationality before him except in a vague indefinite way.
There are some cities and towns in the United States where color is not heeded and men and families are judged by their character, success and citizenship, because the invidious propaganda of southern caste hopes had not penetrated. It was in such a community that Bennet had been reared and schooled. Nor had his companions at college given him cause to think seriously of such matters.
His family, because of their stability and success financially had been rated one of the best in the little town of Bremen where he had been schooled, and Bennet's life had been uneventfully one of ordinary youthful progress. His father was a college man, his mother a refined school teacher and though they knew of the potentialities of prejudices, had purposely hesitated to burden their children with any such hampering outlook on life. They took their places in the citizenship of the town, were accepted at the rating on which they placed themselves, that of ordinary citizens, and raised their children in such an atmosphere.
When it came time for Bennet to attend college his school was selected and he matriculated along with two others from his graduating class. He had never tried to conceal anything about his origin. It simply did not occur to him that any explanation would ever be necessary. Little did he dream that the most serious blow of his life was to come to him from this cause.
He was awakened from his dolorous thoughts by the strains of music from the dance orchestra as he had unconsciously turned his footsteps toward the college again. At the sounds he remembered that he was one of the committee and began to hurry back to the hall. Suddenly he realized that to return without Lida would call for explanations and decided to continue to his room.
Here he threw himself into a Morris chair where gloomy thoughts engulfed him. Dawn was lighting the eastern sky in streaks, great beams of light flashing intermittently brighter and brighter across the house and tree tops when Bennet's thoughts returned to the present. Taxicab after taxicab rolled and rumbled away from the gymnasium as the last of the dancers departed. At last the chatter of departing couples and their chaperones ended. He sat at his window looking toward the East. As he sat the great ball of fire that gives life to daylight and its hopes climbed the horizon and pierced his eyes. The whole sky was burnished crimson. Bennet noted none of these things, however, his entire body was numbed and his mind in a daze.
Great calamities sometimes affect persons in that manner. They are robbed of their senses, overwhelmed at the immensity of the weight seeming to crush them. Bennet seemed to be affected in this manner. He gave no heed to his surroundings, till a pair of pigeons alighted on the window sill in front of him. The persistent efforts of the male to win the attention of his mate, the struttings, cooings, and other antics compelled attention. Just when the male pranced in front of the mate to begin billing the lady pigeon changed her mind and flew away. The surprise of the bird left behind, the chagrin of defeat and the seeming loss of companionship anticipated, recalled Bennet back to the present with such a snap of realization that he almost laughed outright at the bird.
"That's the way of life, old bird," he said. "Disappointment steps in just before success."
At the sound of his voice the remaining bird took wing. Bennet's eyes followed till the pigeon was lost to view. As he looked over the trees his thoughts turned to Lida. The despondency spell was broken, however, and though heart was still heavy, youth is so prone to quick reactions that he began to wonder what she was doing and how she had passed the night. He wondered if she was as miserable as he.
"She can't be," he mused. "What has she to lose?"
Little did he realize that Lida, too, was suffering as had he. Torn between pride and the clamor of her heart she was in a state bordering on insanity. She had not retired but sat, the picture of desolation, by her window weighing all the recent events of her life as they passed in kaleidoscopic sequence before her. She was sitting thus, toying with the ring Bennet had given her when they plighted their lives to each other, when suddenly she felt an arm steal about her waist and the gentle voice of Miss Gregory sounded in her ear.
"Let me help you, dear. I know you are in deep trouble. Tell me. Trouble that is shared soon flees. You need not let a quarrel with Louise spoil your life, or temper."
Intuitively Miss Gregory knew that no girlish quarrel was the cause of this condition in her pupil. She took this indirect method of getting the girl to talk. Lida turned slowly toward her, looked at her for several seconds, sighed, and as she did so her lips began to tremble, while her hand sought that of Miss Gregory as if for comfort.
"Miss Gregory," Lida finally spoke. "Were you ever in love?"
"Foolish child. Every woman, at some time in her life has loved, whether successfully or not." Miss Gregory consoled philosophically.
"I mean, did you ever love, hard enough and strong enough to give up everything for the one you loved."
"Yes, I loved hard enough for all that. But I did not have the courage to give up everything for love. That's why I'm at the head of this school."
"Do you regret giving up your love?" Lida probed.
"Let me tell you, child," Miss Gregory said with a sigh. "No sacrifice can compensate for the loss of love to a woman. And when once a woman loves, never does she forget that love. If I had my life to live over again, if I could recall the lover I once had, nothing would stop me from going to and with him, even to the ends of the earth."
"Nothing, Miss Gregory," Lida asked sadly, pathos in her voice.
"Nothing, dear." Miss Gregory bent close to the girl. "Nothing is worth so much to a human being as love. In fact nothing in life whether of humans or animals is worth more than love. It is love that rules the Universe. Love that rules us. We rule animals best, not by force but by the love and kindness we show them. It is love, of a divine kind that sways the world and keeps us from catastrophe after catastrophe, cataclysm after cataclysm. But as for humans there is nothing so beautiful or so satisfying to a woman as the love of a good man—her man."
"But suppose, there are differences?" Lida persisted.
"There can and should be no differences. There were differences in my case and these differences, mere shadows, have caused me many a night of tears and regrets. Family should not count, nor should religion—And financial circumstances least of all. So long as tastes are in harmony, desires and ambitions dovetail, nothing should matter."
"But, Miss Gregory, suppose there's difference in nationality?"
"The question of love between two persons is a matter of individuality, personality and nationality should not matter any more than religion. God gave us the gift of love, or rather breathed into us the spirit of love, which is himself, before he divided us into nations and races, or religions. I have learned to know this after bitter experiences."
Lida nestled closer to the elder woman as if the words comforted. She still had some questions to ask for she sighed pathetically. Miss Gregory drew the girl closer to her as if to encourage her to talk. Before Lida could frame another question, however, Miss Gregory continued ruminatively:
"The trouble with most of us is we love not truly."
"Oh, Miss Gregory, how can you say that?" Lida asked.
"It is true," was the defense. "We love form, social position, public approbation, grandeur, wealth, and many things when we men and women should love character, gentility, good breeding, soul, ideals, moral courage, beauty of spirit in persons. I neglected to see these and have been left a lonely aging woman."
"But you have your school and the love of your girls. You are dear to them and they must be to you," Lida offered.
"True, but what love can compensate a woman for the love of a strong good man and children? No, my dear, if you truly love a man and he loves you, follow your love and your heart."
"But, Miss Gregory, my case is so different. You don't understand. I—I—can't tell you." Lida burst into a fit of weeping again.
Miss Gregory stroked the head that now lay in her lap. As she stroked the girl's head she soothed her with:
"You poor child. Don't worry, it will all come out right." Suddenly Lida sat up, looked into the eyes of the elder woman then asked:
"Miss Gregory, could you,—would you marry a man of the colored race—a man of slave race, if you were of a family that had owned slaves?"
Miss Gregory paled and almost swooned. "Oh, God," she said, "is that the trouble? You poor child, no wonder you worry. What a calamity! What an awful calamity," she began to weep herself. Lida looked on in wonderment not knowing what to think. Miss Gregory, however, through her tears was picturing the calamity to her school, and the scandal news of such an affair would create among her pupils; she saw her school wrecked since parents would no longer send their children to her place as a select school for finishing. She saw her livelihood vanishing, and panic seized her. Tears dried and horror gripped her heart.
"You don't mean that, dear girl." She finally managed to say. "What will your father say? What will everybody say. Where did you meet him? Oh, forget him, forget him, forget him. Such a thing is impossible! Such a thing would only mean trouble. Don't think of it. Who is he? Tell me."
"I'm afraid it's too late now, Miss Gregory. I love him," Lida said simply.
"Who is he? Where did you meet him? How did it happen?" A thousand questions rushed in panicky fashion through the elder woman's mind.
Lida looked at her adviser in amazement. "Why, you just said nationality shouldn't count. What did you mean?"
"Not that,—not that, not that," Miss Gregory wailed. "I never dreamed of that. You will ruin us all, ruin me, ruin my school—Oh, God, what shall I do?"
"Then you didn't mean what you were just saying?—You were just trying to comfort me. All your fine words were empty?—And I thought I had a friend," she ended pathetically.
The elder woman was silent till the silence was becoming painful to the two. Lida essayed to speak again. Miss Gregory, her head still bowed, the chin cupped in a hand, her elbow on the arm of the Morris chair, was still silent. The words she had spoken to the girl were still repeating themselves in her mind. Did nothing matter? She was asking herself. As she debated she recalled her own broken romance of early life, how this had spoiled her life and caused her heart to wither and dry till she opened this school. Her romance had been broken because of proud parents and the question of wealth but it had been broken just the same. Now after sacrificing love for wealth, her family had lost their wealth, her father and mother had died, the former of grief over financial losses and she had been left cheated out of both wealth and love. Lida had risen and was standing at the window of her room looking onto the street. As Miss Gregory thought the lines deepened in her face till it became drawn and somewhat hard and pale. The silence was tense. Finally she sighed deeply. Lida turned and the teacher beckoned the girl to her.
"Lida," she said, "I am here as teacher, counsellor and guide to my girls. What I said a little while ago I meant. Nothing in life should outweigh love, if we are truly to be happy. The question of whether we are to sacrifice love for other things is a matter for each to decide. I know human nature enough to say that women look on love and marriage differently than do men. If a woman loves a man she cares not who he is or what he is. If she decides that a man can make her happy and keep her happy, she cares not who or what he is. Most of us, though, are color cowards and public opinion cowards. We fear what the other fellow will say; what the other girl will say.
"For a girl to marry a colored man requires heroic courage, here in America. There are many such marriages, it is true, but none between a girl of your standing and rearing and one of that race. I don't think the man ought to ask the girl to make such a sacrifice.—"
"Oh, he hasn't asked me," Lida hastened to defend. Miss Gregory waved her hand impatiently at the interruption.
"For a girl of your standing to take such a step means the sacrifice of home, family, friends, wealth; the causing of bitterness, heartaches on the part of your family and much doubt as to the success of the experiment. You will be cut off entirely from your friends and associates who will see only that you have thrown your life away; you will be without companions except such as he, from his choosing may bring to you and such an act can mean only trouble and grief, for you. I have known some happy marriages of the kind, and see no reason why such unions should not be happy except that conditions in America are not ripe for such. The world is too full of prejudice. In some other country it might be successful. It has been successful—It would be successful. The question is, in your case, is he worth the worry and sacrifice to be entailed?
"I think not. I would advise, before your romance goes too far, that you forget it. When I spoke of forgetting, it was before I was thinking of what the story of such an alliance would mean for me and my school. I am getting to be an old woman now, and this has been my dependence. Therefore, you will understand and forgive me, for the outburst, selfish as it was. For your own sake, Lida, child—for your own sake I would advise you to forget this romance. It is your first, and a girlish romance. It will be easy to forget. There will come a greater love in your life some day and you will look back on this romance as a girlish dream and be glad you did not take the step you contemplate."
"Has that been your experience, Miss Gregory?" Lida asked.
"Oh, no. But my case was different. I was in love with a white man."
"You loved, though, didn't you?" Lida persisted.
"Yes."
"You still love, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And that is true love, isn't it? You didn't care what the man was, you just loved him?" Miss Gregory bowed her head in assent. "Well, I have loved and do love. I did not ask what manner of man it was I loved. I know him to be a man and I love him. It is too late now to talk forgetting. I'll never forget him. How can I forget what my heart wants as it has wanted nothing else in my life. Besides he saved my life and I owe it to him. I would go to the ends of the earth with him. What if he has colored blood in him, he also has white blood, and except that, to me he stands out above all the men I have known. He is no different from any other man."
Miss Gregory now saw that it would be useless to argue further with Lida but decided she would do what she could to thwart any further intercourse with Lida and her lover, even though as yet she had not learned the name of the young man. She reasoned that the name would be easy to secure when once her plans were made, since she could get the information from some of the other girls in the school. When she saw Lida becoming excited over the subject she dismissed it with:
"Well, my dear, we'll talk things over again later. You'll be excused from classes today, now get some sleep and I'll send a nurse to look after you, then perhaps, tonight I'll come and talk it all over with you again." With that she kissed the girl and was gone.