CLAUDIE’S COLOR LINE.
MISS MARY L. SAWYER.
“I never, never can bring myself to do it, Auntie; I know I never can!” and Claudie’s blue eyes grew so very cloudy that Auntie thought the rain drops would surely fall.
“Very well, my darling, you may do as you please,” she said, cheerily; “but now run out into the sunshine, for I shall be very busy this morning and you must amuse yourself.”
That did not seem a hard thing to the little girl, as she wanted to explore the new home into which she had come for the first time the night before. How strange everything looked; the blue mountains in the distance, the cotton fields where women were picking the white balls into baskets, the little log cabins with their queer mud chimneys, and the mules shaking their long ears as they drew the great wagons piled high with snowy cotton bales along the road to town. From the open window of the great brick building opposite she could hear the hum of voices, for this was a colored college, and Claudie’s uncle was one of its Professors. Her mamma had gone to Heaven a little time before, and this was why she was playing alone in the Southern sunshine at Auntie Faith’s home.
But why was she alone? Out under the cedar trees were Pink and Chloe and little Midge “playing supper” with persimmons and chincapins, and breaking out now and then into song as naturally as the mocking-birds themselves. They had viewed Claudie from afar with round, admiring eyes, reserved the biggest chincapins for her use, and Pink had even ventured to say “Howdy?” but the little stranger stood aloof. Not a cross word or a naughty one had any of the children spoken, and they looked as clean and neat as Claudie herself would have looked had she been eating very ripe persimmons as freely as they. Pink’s black eyes were as full of fun and sparkle as Claudie’s blue ones, and her face as bright, and yet playing with these children was the very thing Claudie had said she could never, never do!
I really don’t like to tell you her reason, she would be so ashamed of it now. It was just because their merry little faces were colored black instead of white!
Now Claudie would never have been so foolish if she had not heard some grown-up people talking after this fashion just before she left the North:
“I really don’t see how dear Mrs. Faith, with her refined tastes, can live among the blacks,” said one.
“Think of eating at the same table, and actually touching them! It fairly makes me shiver,” echoed another, who sat with one arm around a big Newfoundland dog while she fed him with candy.
And after Mrs. Faith, with tears in her eyes, had told the story of her work and described her love and respect for her colored friends, another lady smilingly said:
“I have enjoyed your talk so much, Mrs. Faith; but I don’t envy you in the least. I know I couldn’t endure the negroes.”
Claudie was not old enough to understand that people who talk in this way are not the best or the wisest or the most refined people, and so their words influenced her. She was a very sociable little body, however, and playing alone soon grew dull. It was hot on the veranda, and, too, indeed, that shady nook under the cedars seemed the only cool spot in the yard just then, and how cunning little Midge did look!
“No second-class on board the train,
No difference in the fare,”
piped Pink, gleefully, as she set her table with gouber shells for plates.
Claudie started. Why, Auntie sung that song once, and she said it meant that Jesus and the angels loved black people just as well as white ones, and thought them quite as beautiful. How funny to forget that! If the little angels would be willing to play with colored children of course she could, and then those persimmons were vanishing so fast!
The next minute a little white-robed maiden was flying through the rose-garden toward the cedars.
“Oh, Pink!” she cried, breathlessly, “I never ate a persimmon in all my life.”
“We is saving some for you,” answered Pink, as graciously as if her polite advances had been received at first, “an’ Chloe got some ‘simmon bread an’ Midge brought some goubers.”
What these new delights were Claudie had no idea, and the children’s tongues ran faster than ever as they explained. After the feast came an exploring trip, and under Pink’s guidance the yard and the adjoining field proved a perfect storehouse of treasures.
“’Clare, I done forgot,” she cried, suddenly producing a long necklace of chincapins, and presenting it shyly to Claudie; “I made it on purpose for you.”
“Oh, you splendid Pink!” cried Claudie; “you are the very nicest little girl I know!” and throwing her arms around her new friend’s neck she kissed her rapturously.
Then of course they must play house, with Claudie as the well-dressed mamma, and then came school and church and everything else they could think of, till at last, tired out with play, they threw themselves down in the shade to tell stories.
“I wonder if Heaven is over yonder by the mountains,” said Claudie, dreamily; “my mamma is in Heaven, and she has a beautiful white robe, and a golden crown and a harp!”
“An’ my mamma is in Hebben, too, an’ she wears a collarette,” chimed in Chloe with much importance; “but Hebben isn’t on the mountains; it’s in England!”
Claudie had just opened her mouth to dispute this remarkable statement, when Pink took up the argument:
“Chloe doesn’t know nuffin ’bout it,” she laughed. “She just thinks that ’cause cousin Emma went to England in a big ship with a heap of colored people to sing, an’ she said ev’rybody was so good it seemed just like Heaven, and nobody seemed to notice that they weren’t as white as anybody, an’ she saw the queen, an’ she went to dinner with white folks in splendid big houses, an’ a white gen’leman took her out to dinner hisself, an’ treated her ’zactly like a white lady; an’ she says, ‘’magine me in Washington an’ Gene’l Sherman taking me out to dinner!’”
Pink stopped breathless.
“But she did say it were sure ’nuff Hebben dere! You didn’t tell it all, Pink Symond,” persisted Chloe, indignantly.
“Yes,” said Pink, more soberly, “she did say that when they came home an’ she had to ride in smoking cars, an’ couldn’t go to table with white folks at hotels, an’ was treated just like we all are, she thought England must be Heaven sure enough, ’cause everybody says this is the freest country outside of Heaven!”
Just then this theological discussion was ended by the sound of the dinner-bells, and Pink and Claudie, with arms lovingly around each other, walked slowly toward the house.
“Of such is the kingdom of Heaven,” murmured Uncle Faith as he watched them from his study window, and the tired look on his face faded away and something came instead that made Claudie say wonderingly—
“Oh, Uncle Faith, you look like—like the apostle John!”
“I think Pink is perfectly beautiful, Auntie,” whispered Claudie at her bedtime talk that night, “and I do wish those ladies at home could see her. You know, Auntie”—the fair face flushing—“I was so ignorant ’bout the colored people this morning, and I didn’t know any better, and I s’pose that’s just the way with those ladies. Isn’t there some way we could tell them, Auntie, that the colored people are just like us, and that they don’t seem so very colored after all?”