There Is Confusion/Chapter 10

Sunday was always an important day in the Marshall household. Its importance, it is true, took on a different character as the years sped. In the early days Mr. Marshall looked forward to it as the outward and visible sign of an inward worth. He was a steward in his church, Old Zion, and on Sundays in a long frock coat with a correct collar, a black Ascot tie surmounted by a gold horseshoe, he passed the collection box from pew to pew. He liked to bend his rather stately iron-gray head in recognition of various greetings. He felt he looked the part, as indeed he did, of an upright, ambitious, aspiring citizen.

Many a small boy unconsciously stored away a memory of the erect wholesome figure as a possible exemplar for future consideration.

His wife found Sunday a rather distracting day. It was eminently satisfying, doubtless, to be able to show off such a number of stylish costumes. Joel had always been able to have her dress well. There was one wine-colored cashmere with a polonaise and bustle which she had considered particularly fetching.

"I never put the dress on in the old days," she said to her girls, showing them the truly awe-inspiring picture, "without thinking to myself: 'I certainly am glad I married Joel.' I always did love fine clothes. Sylvia, I think you must have inherited my taste."

Sylvia groaned. "Oh, no, mamma, I don't deserve that!"

Clothes, however, had not quite compensated Mrs. Marshall ​for the arduousness otherwise entailed in the observance of the Sabbath. There was always company. Joel, a caterer, knew "how it ought to be done." Then there were the four children to dress and get off, and the constant oversight of them when they came home to see that they did not break the thousand inhibitions which made the day sacred.

"I used to hate it so," Sandy laughed. "Remember, Phil, how we used to try to find those awful sailor collars—I think they're called Buster Browns now—and see if we couldn't hide them or mark them up before the next Sunday? Mother must have had a million of them, for we were never able to exhaust her supply."

"Weren't you sights!" Sylvia teased. "You were fat, Alec, and your face rose large and round over your collar like a full moon. You had two eyes set away back from your fat cheeks and you had to bend your head way over to look down———"

"And you wore a grayish-brownish-greenery-yallery round straw hat," interposed Joanna.

"Don't you talk," Philip jeered at them, "I remember two poke bonnets, reddish, with fuzzy stuff sticking up over them."

"Astrakhan. Yes, I remember," Sylvia told him. "Weren't they awful? And the deadliness of Sunday afternoon! You boys sitting around knocking your feet against the rungs of the chairs. Such glooms!"

"Yes, and you," said Sandy, assuming a solemn countenance. "Looking dejectedly out of the window, your face propped in your hands!"

"Joanna was the only one who got anything out of those Sundays," Philip mused. "I can see her now flat on her tummy reading the life of some exemplary female."

"Notable women of color," laughed Joanna. "I adored Sunday."

​Certainly no flavor of those past days spoiled the Marshalls' enjoyment in these later years. Rather remarkably the whole family still went to church, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall from years of long habit, Sylvia because she rather liked to please her mother and because it amused her to have Brian Spencer, whom church-going bored to the point of agony, obey her wish that he should go. Sandy, now in the real estate business, thought it gave him standing in the community.

Philip's reasons were various. Chiefly he went to church as he went to many meetings, because he was interested in seeing groups of colored people together. He had a strong desire to sense the social consciousness, for he was trying to learn just what stirred mass feeling and into what channels it could be directed. A minister of the poorest type was an unfailing source of study to him. How would this man sway the people? And what would he ask of them once he had them ready to listen to his will? Philip always dreamed of a leader who should recognize that psychological moment and who would guide a whole race forward to the realization of its steadily increasing strength.

He dreamed many dreams sitting crosswise in the far corner of his pew, his back partly against the wall, partly against the seat, his lean, brown, slightly haggard face bent forward. He had already the somewhat remote glance of the thinker, though his firm chin pronounced him no less the man of action. Maggie Ellersley, sitting across the church from him, watching him a little covertly under her drooping hat brim, used to think he looked like a man who would take what he wanted.

"If only he knew what he wanted," she half sighed. Joanna was the soloist of the choir these days, sole raison d'être of her church-going. Her mezzo voice full and pulsing and gold brought throngs to the church every Sunday.

"There is a green hill far away," she sang, and the puzzled, ​groping congregation turned its sea of black and brown, yellow and white faces toward her and knew a sudden peace. Even Philip stopped his restless inner queries.

At times like these Peter Bye felt his very heart leap toward her.

Joanna with her cool eyes and steady head cared almost nothing about this. She never saw herself in this scene. Always in her mind's eye she was far, far away from the church, in a great hall, in a crowded theater. There would be tier on tier of faces rising, rising above her. And to-morrow there would be the critics. . . .

The Sundays passed thus week-end to week-end. One of them stood out in Joanna's memory. Philip, a Harvard junior, was home on his summer vacation, but he and Sylvia and Sandy had gone to visit their mother's folks in Philadelphia.

Joanna, Brian Spencer, Peter, and Maggie Ellersley stepped out of church and walked down the torrid street. It was early June, but the weather was that of August.

"Our children are growing up," said Mrs. Marshall to Mrs.

Ellersley, lingering a moment in the shady vestibule. "See how tall Joanna and Maggie have grown. They were the littlest things!"

Mrs. Ellersley followed the group with a wistful eye. Of late she had begun to have some idea of Maggie's unspoken desires. She wished it were Philip instead of Brian walking down the street with her daughter. She was very tired, tired enough to die, but she could not, she felt, leave Maggie alone, unplaced in the world.

The four young people turned the corner and prepared to separate.

"Brian is coming to the house for dinner," said Joanna. "You coming, Maggie and Peter?"

​Maggie had an engagement for the afternoon. Peter refused, too, sulkily, to Joanna's vast satisfaction.

"Jealous," she thought with some pride. It was an exhibition with which she seldom met. Most of the young men of her acquaintance were a little afraid of Joanna with her intent and serious air. "High-brow" they called her and she knew it, liked it, too, though it had its inconveniences.

"Peter's mad," she laughed as the two moved off, "because I told him I was going to the benefit concert with you, Brian, and so he couldn't come to-night."

"Sorry if I spoked his wheel," said Brian, "but you just have to take pity on me, Jan, I'm so lonely without Sylvia."

"Of course. Isn't it funny that he doesn't realize that? He thinks you are making up to me. As though I would come between you and Sylvia. Great chance I'd have."

"About as much as I'd have, trying to come between: you and Peter. Not that I know anything about you, Janna. Heaven only knows what you mean to do with the boy. But I wouldn't want to face Peter, if I were aiming to be his rival. Wonder what he'll do when he goes to the University in Philadelphia. What's he going off there for, anyway? Can't he do just as well here?"

"The penalty of being colored," said Joanna soberly. "He can get much better hospital work in Philadelphia. Of course he could take his pre-medic work here, but he thinks it best to begin where he plans to finish."

"How long will he be away?"

"Forever and ever, six or seven years, I think. Of course, we both have relatives in Philadelphia. His great-uncle Peter, for whom he was named, is still there, you know. Peter's counting on living with him. It will save expense."

"Six or seven years!" said Brian disregarding anything else. "Golly what a wait! It would kill any girl but you, Janna."

​"Sylvia didn't die while you were in Harvard," Joanna returned meanly.

"Not much she didn't! But she kept me in the back of her head, I'll swear. While you with your singing and dancing and your wildcat schemes of getting on the stage! Better stick to your own Janna, and build up colored art."

"Why, I am," cried Joanna, astonished. "You don't think I want to forsake—us. Not at all. But I want to show us to the world. I am colored, of course, but American first. Why shouldn't I speak to all America?"

"H'm, I suppose you're right. You ought to win out if anyone can. You work hard enough, Janna. You're eighteen now, aren't you? Well, you've got a good ways to go. How old is Peter?"

"Twenty. He lost a lot of time when he was little. That's why he's so late entering college.

"Well look here, what are you going to do with him?"

"I may not have a chance to do anything with him, Mr. Busybody."

"Phew, isn't it hot! Thank goodness here's the house. Run along and get your brother-in-law a long, cold drink."

He stayed after dinner—they had it on Sundays at three—and talked away the rest of the afternoon to Joel in the long dark dining room.

"It's cool here," said Joel, handing him a cigar. "Light up and tell me how's Harlem?"

"Great, sir. It's the place for colored people. Let us get you a house up there. Pick you up something fine in One Hundred and Thirty-first Street." Brian, too, had gone into real estate as Alexander's partner.

Joel rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "Don't know but what I might. This neighborhood's gone down. Let me see your house."

​"Yes, sir, I will. Has—er—Sylvia said anything to you about me? I'm getting along pretty well now, sir."

"What should she say? Here Joanna, come take this lovesick boy off my hands!"

Joanna came, serene and cool, a little prim in her pale yellow dress and soft floppy hat of tan chiffon. She handed Brian his Panama.

"I'm ready, Brian."

Joel stopped them for a moment, clapped the boy on the shoulder. "It's all right as far as her mother and I are concerned, Brian."

The two went off and heard a gracious, mellow-voiced woman fill a hall with sound that made them forget the heat.

"My collar's wringing wet, and I never thought of it. Wonderful how music can make people forget."

"Even color," said Joanna thoughtfully. "Did you see that white woman next to me edge away when I sat down? But when she heard me humming after it was over, she leaned over and asked me if I knew the words."

"I wondered what you were talking about. Awfully jolly of you to have taken pity on me to-night, Janna dear. You marry Peter and all four of us will go to these concerts and sit in the gallery and come home praising God from whom all blessings flow."

"It certainly sounds nice. Only we mustn't forget Philip. Don't ring the bell, here's the key."

He took it. "All right about Philip. Maggie is fond of music, too."

Joanna, in the act of entering the door, stepped back and faced him sharply. "What's Maggie got to do with it?"

"Well, she and Phil. They've always paired off together, haven't they? Just like you and Peter, just like Sylvia and me."

"She wouldn't dare," said Joanna fiercely. "Why, Philip—​he's going to be somebody great, wonderful, a Garibaldi, a Toussaint! And Maggie, Maggie's just nobody, Brian. Why, do you know what she's taking up? Hair work, straightening hair, salves and shampoos and curling-irons."

"Joanna, you're an utter snob. I always knew you looked down on people unless they were following some mad will o' the wisp. Maggie's as good as any of us. Why look here, she graduated from high school with Sylvia. You can't look down on her."

"Sylvia's my sister, thank you. She's Joel Marshall's daughter. She has background, she knows good music and pictures and worth while people."

"You talk like a silly book. What's that got to do with it? And, anyway, you can't stop it now."

"What's the reason I can't?"

"Well, good Lord, it must be as good as settled. Why Maggie thinks—only to-day— Oh—here, I've said enough. Thanks awfully for a nice evening, Jan———"

"What'd she say, Brian?"

"Well, you know we were coming home from church and you and Bye were ahead and I said, 'Look at: the lucky pair.'"

"Yes, never mind me. Well, well?"

"And she said, 'You miss Sylvia, don't you, Brian?' 'You bet,' I told her.

"And she looked at me—you know how Maggie can look—she said, 'Just like I miss Philip, I guess.'"

Joanna grew visibly taller. "You let her say that, Brian Spencer?"

"Well, how could I stop her? Of course she misses Phil. And quit acting 'offended pride,' Joanna. Heavens, doesn't Sylvia sometimes do sewing?"

"Oh, but that's different, she creates, she's an artist.———"

"Artist your grandmother! Sleep it off, Janna. Good night." He went off, striding down the quiet street.

​Joanna closed the door and crept quietly up to her room. Seated in a wicker arm-chair in a stream of gold summer moonlight, she spent a long time in deep thought.

Maggie and Philip! Maggie! Of late she and Philip had had many a long talk. He'd lean against the mantelpiece—his restless fingers caressing a little black statuette:

"Jan, I'll talk to you, because you've always cared about this kind of thing. Raise a monument—more-enduring-than-bronze sort of business, you know. When I graduate—by the way, I think I'll be elected Phi Beta Kappa next year—I've got a scheme, I've got a plan that will work all right. Father will be proud of me, you'll see. And you, too, old girl, you've always been a bright beacon light. You stick to this stage business, you'll win out. There'll be a twin star constellation. 'The well known Marshalls, Joanna and Philip.' We'll make the whole world realize what colored people can do. Nothing short of 'battle, murder or sudden death' is to interfere."

He, too, had been bitten by the desire to make the most of his life. And now here was Maggie Ellersley.

"What ambition has she?" Joanna asked herself fiercely, forgetting to measure the depth of the abyss of poverty and wretchedness from which Maggie had sprung. "She shan't spoil my brother's chances."

Rushing over to her little desk, she pulled out a piece of tan stationery and began a note.

"Dear Maggie———"