The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races

by Oscar Micheaux

It was all clear to him now. And then the other.... In all his life, virtue in women had been his highest regard. During the months he spent in the south, he had seen immorality of a nature that was revolting to his finer senses. It had been the custom since the landing of Negroes in this country, and was in evidence every where, in the many colors that made up his people; but, in spite of this, his high regard for the virtuous woman remained the same. So, when the words of the hag came back to him, amid all the good things he was thinking of her, for a time, all was swept from him in a wave of revolt.... How could he be blind henceforth to that?

He became weak and listless for a time. To pass on through the city; to catch one of the ocean goers that he was often interested in observing at the harbor, and go to Argentina, Brazil—anywhere and forget it all; and then there came to him the thought of his people. All that he had lived through when he saw the leaders with their selfishness, the neglect of their Christian duty; how he had written of that selfishness, fearlessly with jaws set and soul on fire; and of the reign of excitement that followed—it was impossible to further contemplate other plans.

And, amid all the chaos, there came to him thoughts of the success of the Christian forward movement in the town up the river. With success there, in the worst of two towns in the world, it was now an almost foregone conclusion, that shortly, the spirit would prevail successfully in other towns. Yes, it would have to. The public, for its own welfare, would soon come to appreciate what such a movement meant to two-fifths of its population. And how came this to be? Would the people of that town up the river, now have a beautiful building in course of construction, if it had been left to them to supply that fatal twenty-five thousand? "Great God!" he murmured, "how can I, how can I!"

And, as the train continued on its way over innumerable trestles with lagoons and marshes everywhere, it occurred to him, that the one who had made all this possible, and who, at the price of purity, which was a woman's all, was now, and for the sake of it, homeless and friendless.... Even that family, that bishop father, surrounded by thousands of hero worshippers, with his picture decorating the walls of thousands of homes, and pointed to by day, would scorn her. The thousands of young men, respectable, but poor, and who, for this girl's sacrifice, were given a great chance to conduct their future lives along Christian lines, even they would scorn her. All decent and respecting society would scorn her. They would have to scorn her. He himself had already scorned her.

He allowed his gaze to wander beyond the waters of a lagoon; until it rested upon a clump of trees that rose ragged in the background. He was too torn with anguish to think for a time. What price had been put upon virtue, for his people—and her people—was too great to estimate. But behind it all, was a homeless, friendless, loveless little girl, drifting about in the world. For Mildred Latham as he saw her again, was a mere girl, not yet twenty-two. She had a heart, but what kind of a heart must she have, after the suffering she had endured? Yet she was a human being, with a human desire after all.

What he had seen in her eyes in Cincinnati; that pain, and at times that wild, elfinlike, mad desire.... And, oh, that caress, that one kiss that seemed to have penetrated her very soul; the look she had given him; that weak protest, afterward united in its pathetic appeal for mercy.... She had been his dream; his mad desire. He had declared then, that he would help to dispell that worry; he had felt himself courageous enough to do so, too; but now before him was the test, and he was weakening under it.

Back in the Rosebud Country, he had lived alone for years, and during those long days, his greatest desire, his greatest hope, had been to love, to have that love returned by his ideal of womanhood. He dismissed what had followed. The other had not even courage enough to accept graciously what he had worked for. Any woman can, to a degree, mould the future of her husband. No man, he knew, could be oblivious to the condition of his household, and that which made it. That part of his life, however, had long since been a closed chapter. His great effort had been to forget it, and he had succeeded to such a degree, that he was able to concentrate his mind on other things; but now, it was different. Because, with the exception of the one thing, Mildred Latham was more than his picture, his ideal. But that one thing was the silent barrier.

It was springtime now, and back in the Rosebud Country all must be busy. He thought of the years, and how busy he was at this time. And hopeful; because, whether the season proved successful or not, springtime, when the crops were planted, was always a hopeful time; every farmer believed, as he planted his seed, that the season would be successful. And now he was not there to plant the crops. He had not been there the year before; but, as he continued to recall the past, he knew that it had never occurred to him that he would have been anywhere else but there. He wanted to be there; but financially, he couldn't afford to be there any more.

After an interminable spell of mental depression, something came to his mind. It entered slowly, but at last took shape. He whispered after a time: "Yes, yes, I could. With that amount I could start all over again.... And out there, no one would know, no one would need to know.... Just being there with the right to continue as I once was; but with a terrible experience to remind me of what it is all worth—it would not be the same now."

He saw her now differently. That other side was passing. It would come back—it would keep coming back; but it was his duty; it was his future—it was his very life to crush it as often as it came up; but that was not the half of it: Mildred Latham was homeless, and friendless as we know. After what she had done for so many others, was it not Christianlike to think of her?...