Unfettered: A Novel

by Sutton E. Griggs

Day after day Dorlan took his seat at the window of his room and watched the messenger boys as they hurried to an fro delivering messages. He thought of how much anxiety the countless messages represented, but concluded that his was equal to all the other anxieties combined. Each night, when he regarded the hour as too late to reasonably expect a message from Morlene, he would go down to the beach and gaze out upon the great expanse of waters. The tossing waves and the heaving billows reminded him of his own heart. The tides would roll in to the shore and the waves would lap his feet with their spray, as much as to say, "Come with us. We are like you. We are restless. Come with us." Dorlan would look up at the watching stars and out into the depths of the silent dark. Then he would whisper to the pleading waves: "Not yet. Perhaps some day."

Dorlan's love, in keeping with the well earned reputation of that master passion, had led him to hope for an early answer from Morlene, in spite of the extreme gravity and manifold complexity of the question that she was now trying to decide. His reason told him better than to expect so early a reply. Thus, when love gave evidence of disappointment, reason would say, "Much love hath made thee mad, my boy. Give the dear girl a chance, will you?" At the close of each day this colloquy between love and reason would take place.

But Morlene's delay began to extend beyond the utmost limits that Dorlan had set. Thereupon love's tone became more insistent and the voice of reason grew correspondingly feeble.

Dorlan at last concluded that Morlene's decision was unfavorable to him, and that she hesitated to deliver the final blow. Every vestige of hope had fled and he now kept up his daily vigil purely out of respect for Morlene, not that he longer expected a favorable answer.

Unwilling for Morlene's sake to listen in the nights' solitude to the wooing of the restless waves, Dorlan changed his nightly course and moved about in the city. As he was listlessly wandering through the city one night, he came upon a crowd standing in a vacant lot listening to a man detail the reputed virtues of medicines which he was trying to sell.

The medicine man's face was handsome, his head covered with a profusion of flaxen hair which fell in curls over his shoulders. His voice had a pleasing ring and his whole personality was alluring. On the platform with the man was a group of Negro boys who provided entertainment for the crowd in the intervals between the introduction of the various medicines. Dorlan stood on the outer edge of the throng and thought on the spectacle presented.

The white people of the South, as evidenced by their pleasure in Negro minstrelsy, were prone to regard the Negro as a joke. And the unthinking youths were now employed to dance and sing and laugh away the aspirations of a people.

Dorlan's veins began to pulsate with indignation as he reflected on the fact that the ludicrous in the race was the only feature that had free access to the public gaze. He was longing for an opportunity to show to the audience that there was something in the Negro that could make their bosoms thrill with admiration. In a most unexpected manner the opportunity was to come.

The medicine man near the hour of closing addressed the audience, saying: "Gentlemen, it pains me to state that our aeronaut is confined to his bed and will be unable to-night to make his customary balloon ascension and descent in the parachute. That part of our evening's entertainment must therefore be omitted, unless some one of you will volunteer to act in his stead."

The last remark was accompanied with a smile, the speaker taking it for granted that no one would be willing to take the risk.