"If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it."
Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the thing that he was doing.
"Whoever started the damned business going," he went on, with an attempt at a laugh, "got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start it, and here they are, women—well, women such as you speak of, with all the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don't you believe a woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who loved her than if she took up with some coarse fellow as black as her shoes?"
"No," John Merry vale answered, "the life of such a woman is the loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the black world casts her off."
"Aren't you mistaken?" The question came quickly, with an undertone of anxiety. "It seems to me that the black race must understand that there's nothing for it but to get whiter."
"There's nothing for it but to get blacker, Son. All, black and white, are learning to know this. Within its own circle it may build up a civilization that shall be a humble imitation of the civilization of the white race, a race that has had a start of thousands of years. We must be patient, helping when we can, not hindering."
Lee scanned his father's face, but could see nothing to show that he was thinking of any present issue; rather he was striving to express his belief on a vexed question that would trouble this country long after he was gone. Nor did he glance at his listener, but stood, a tall, thin figure in his long black coat, kindly, serious.
"It is a great problem, that of the two races," he continued musingly, "a problem that the South alone can solve, since we know the black man, his virtues and his limitations. He has come to us in his trouble and we have helped and advised him. That is as it should be, but increasingly he will have to live without our surveillance. For after all, no man is fit to be the master of another; and not even the gentlemen of the South were wise enough to be entrusted with the lives of other men. My father fought to perpetuate the peculiar institution of slavery, and as a boy I put a gun on my shoulder and went out in the last year of the war. We thought that we were right, but we know now that we were mistaken."
"Yes."
"Sometimes I am afraid that as the country develops, as industry increases, the friendly relations between the whites and the blacks will wholly cease, and each will go his way, regardless of the other. But that will never happen while you are here, I feel sure."