The Cassowary; What Chanced in the Cleft Mountains

by Stanley Waterloo

I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conducted individuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spots of the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewd capitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I met all, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet, knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good ones made me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little children leaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman who thought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go out alone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. There was one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was one among those—may the good God ever have her in his keeping—who, from no thought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happiness and also such sorrow as few men know.

Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thought deep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I held communion on lake and shore in that enchanted summer with the woman who held my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfully guilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. I drifted and drifted. I cannot analyze my own feelings at the time. I knew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, even then, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into a church and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.

Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky it disappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds part slowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leaving blackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things, and then came silence. There was only the information that one fair guest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.

Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor, principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am a wanderer. What am I to do? I am a man without a country as much as was poor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan, I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without a country because my country will not give me what it gives to other men. I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects me and with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing in common. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me by inches.

I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some African chieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors? I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying law of God and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of the different races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. A negro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is to me as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All my thoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, to sympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have him help me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am a white man. But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pity me, oh pity me."

As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all the story. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way I have traveled.

Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freight train on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, named me Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing at my pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a book in my hand.

One day, while we were waiting on a siding near a small station, a tramp recognized me. He was a man I had defended in court for some small offense, in the distant western town where I practiced law. I had him kept out of jail by my pleading. I had believed that his arrest and trial would be a lesson such as would keep him from the idle and vicious ways he was just beginning to follow at that time.

The tramp rode a few miles on our train. After that the train crew ceased to consort with me. They looked sullenly upon me and muttered among themselves when I came near them. The engineer looked the other way when he had to speak to me. His face was grim and sad, as well, but he looked the other way. There was no outbreak, but I could not endure my position. I left the railroad work as soon as our train arrived in the city where the company made its headquarters.

Once again, some years after the railway episode, I thought to work on a street-car line. I applied for the position of motorman, and was well received by the superintendent to whom I reported after he had in reply to my letter, asked me to call at his office. I gave, at his request, the names of a half a dozen responsible men as references as to my character and responsibility. I arranged with a security company for giving the required bond, and was told that as soon as favorable answers were received from my friends I would be put to practice work; I felt assured of a position, laborious and nerve testing, it is true, but respectable and reasonable well paid.