it was the day after we had given up that particular spot in the woods as a trysting place and we were all driving to the village in bert’s wagon.
we were going for two reasons; ethel intended buying minerva a new dress (for out doors), and i was going to find out something about the concert which i proposed giving.
ethel and i took turns in driving, while james and minerva sat on the back seat.
great billows of clouds lapped the shores of blue above us and cast huge shadows on the hillside; shadows that moving changed the entire aspect of the places over which they passed.
bobolinks launched themselves and their songs at the same time and gave to the day a quality that no other songster is ever able to impart. it was a morning to inspire happiness.
“what a heavenly country this is,” said ethel; “i’d like to live here until the leaves color.”
“i dare say it would be nice here in the winter time, too.”
“oof!” shuddered ethel. “pretty but dreadful. how can anyone keep warm in the country in the wintertime?”
her remark had been heard by minerva, and she said to james:
“do folks leave here in winter?”
“no, indeed,” said james. “winter’s the best time of the year up here. i jus’ like the cold. coastin’ from here to the village, a mile and a half. everybody does it. and skating! umm. you ought to stay up here in winter.”
“oh, lawdy, if it’s so sad in the summer i’d die in the winter. don’t the wind howl like a dog?”
“like a thousand dogs, but i like it. you come up here an’ visit my old mother in the winter, an’ i’ll teach you to skate and you’ll never want to go back.”
“imagine minerva here in winter,” whispered ethel to me. “poor thing. she would die of the horrors. but, do you think she is more contented?”
“i certainly do. she is going to have new clothes—is that a sheep?”
it turned out to be a rock. “there are no sheep around here,” said ethel. “bert said so.”
“i wonder if minerva would be frightened at sheep?”
“she might be. the most peaceful animals aren’t always the most peaceful looking. i think a cow is much more diabolical than a lion as far as looks go. a lion is kind of benign and i dare say that a lion that has just eaten a man looks sleepy and contented and good-natured as he licks his chops.”
“i think the most dreadful looking beast in the whole menagerie is the goat, although, come to think of it, he is more likely to be found in the back yard than in the menagerie, and i dare say that minerva knows him like a book. yes, he has the devil beaten to a pulp, as harry banks would say, and yet he never has the bad manners to spit like the—what was that beautiful beast that spit in the face of that pompous little man down at dreamland?”
“oh, you mean the llama. wasn’t that funny? and he did look so innocent. and now that spitting is a misdemeanor and the practice is going out, i suppose the llama will steadily increase in value—”
“do you mind if we sing. mr. vernon?” said james, respectfully.
i thought a minute. if james had been driving and minerva was by his side on the front seat it would have been perfectly natural for ethel and me to break out into song on such a perfect day in such a lonely place.
as the conditions were reversed; as i was driving and james and minerva were on the back seat, it seemed to me perfectly proper that they should be the ones to break out into roundelays, and i told them to break out—couching the permission in other language.
they began, after a whispered consultation, and the song which they sang was as follows:
“ma-ah ol’ missus said to me
(gwan to git a-home bime by)
“whe-en she died she’d set me free
(gwan to git a-home bime by)
oh dat watermiyun
(lamb er goodness you must die)
i’se gwan fer to jine de cont’aban’ chillun
(gwan ter git a-home bime by).
“whe-en she died she died so po’
(gwan ter git a-home bime by).
she lef’ me wuss’n i was befo’
(gwan ter git a-home bime by).”
they had started the chorus of the second verse, throwing themselves into it with all the abandon of bobolinks—black bobolinks—when we came to a turn in the road and heard a clatter of hoofs and a smart turn-out belonging to summer people from egerton drove by.
i recognized in the ladies who were leaning languidly back on the cushioned seats two new yorkers whom we met at a tea last winter and who seemed to take an interest in ethel, so much so that i told her at the time that if she had had any social ambitions i was sure that here were stepping stones.
but i am quite sure that the stepping stones marveled greatly at the spectacle and the sounds we presented. driving a chorus out. we looked back after we had passed and found that they were rude enough to be looking at us.
“do you care, ethel?”
“well, i wish they had been some one else. it must have looked silly.”
“not at all. it looks perfectly business-like. or it will look so later. when mrs. guernsea and her daughter see the announcements of the concert they will realize that we were doing a little preliminary advertising to whet the appetites of the populace. they will come to the concert. mark my words.”
as we were now within sight of the houses of the village, i told james that i guessed we’d better postpone further melody until our return, as we might be taken for a circus, rather than a concert, and the rest of the way was made in silence.
while ethel was buying clothes for minerva, i, by the advice of james, sought out deacon fotherby of the second congregational church.
he presided over the destinies of a shoestore, and when i went in he was trying to force a number eight shoe on a number nine foot of a cinderella of uncertain age, whose face was red—from his exertions.
i waited patiently about until the good deacon got a larger shoe, called it a number seven (may the recording angel pardon him) and slipped it on the foot of cinderella, who departed simpering.
he came up to me in a business-like way.
“is this deacon fotherby?”
“my name is fotherby, but i sell shoes week days.”
“well, mr. fotherby, i don’t want to buy any shoes to-day, but i do want to know whether you are interested in the hurlbert home.”
the deacon’s manner underwent a remarkable change. up to that time he had been the attentive salesman. now his face softened, he motioned me to a seat and sat down beside me.
“interested? i’m wrapped up in it. what do you want? to help it or be helped by it?”
“both in a way,” said i, as i thought of what the concert was going to accomplish for me.
“i am in a position to give a concert of negro melodies for the benefit of your home. i control—in a measure—two colored persons who have fine voices, and it occurred to me that the villagers and perhaps the summer people would attend a concert given in your church.”
“yes, they would,” said he, rubbing his hands. “and we could provide some attractions out of our own ranks. there’s a male quartette in the sunday school—”
“white?” said i.
“why, certainly,” said he.
“well, i’m a person entirely devoid of race prejudice, but you must remember that this is new england, massachusetts in fact, and if we wish to make a success of this concert we must not mix the two races. i see no reason personally why your white quartette should not sing on the same stage with our colored singers, if they sing as well, but i am quite sure that the public would not patronize the concert if we advertised it as a mixed affair.”
the good deacon rose from his seat and said, “why, my dear sir, i consider that a colored man has just as white a soul as a white man.”
i also rose and told him that i could not swear as to the color of any soul; that souls might be a delicate pink for all i personally knew to the contrary. i also told him that i would not object to attending a concert of beautiful voices that came out of white and black throats (i was not flippant enough to say that all throats were red) but that i knew my fellow yankees too well to think that they would care to come to a concert where whites and blacks sang on the same stage.
“it might go in the south,” said i, “where their ideas about such things are different from ours, but up here if you want our colored concert to be a success you must let all the singing be done by colored folks and all the hearing be done by white.”
at this point the talk drifted to the negro question and what a problem it was getting to be and i found that we thought alike on most points, and i finally made him understand that i was acting from diplomatic motives entirely, and because i understood the temper of the new englanders so well.
“remember that it was in a town in connecticut,” said i, “that a colored man was ejected from a white man’s restaurant, and it is in new england that little colored children have a hard time at school, because they are black, and for no other reason. being in new england, the country of liberty, you must give me the liberty of arranging my concert so that it shall be a success, and therefore (i smiled) there must be no mixture of races on the stage.”
we decided that the early part of september would be a good time to give it, as the haying would by that time have been done and we could count on a larger audience.
on the way home james told me that he had a brother and a little sister, who could be brought into the concert, and that with them he could furnish some very nice quartettes.
ethel looked at me meaningly, and said,
“minerva might go there and practise. do they live at your mother’s?”
“yes, ma’am.”
i realized that it would be better for them to practise at his house than at ours, because, while the practice of music makes perfect, it sometimes also makes maniacs.
