The next day Kenneth received a letter from Jane Phillips. In it she announced that she would arrive in Central City on Monday morning.
Kenneth’s face took on a satisfied smile and deep down in his heart there was happiness and contentment. Jane had occupied an increasingly large portion of his thoughts ever since those wonderful ten days they had spent together last December. Kenneth’s life had been singularly free from feminine influence, other than that of his mother. It was not that he was averse to such influence, but his life had been so busy that he had had no time to spend in wandering through the Elysian fields of love-making. There had been one girl in New York. He had met her at a dance in Harlem. Together they had spent their Sundays and the evenings when he was free from his duties at the hospital in wandering through Central and Bronx Parks. Occasionally they had attended the theatre. One night their hands had touched as they sat in the semi-darkness and watched the tender love scene on the stage. She had not withdrawn her hand. He sat there thrilled at the touch and had lived the character of the make-believe hero as he made ardent love on the stage. Naturally, the heroine was none other than the girl who sat beside him. Afterwards, they had ridden home atop a Fifth Avenue bus, and the whole city seemed filled with romance. He had imagined himself at the time deeply in love. But that tender episode had soon ended when he told her he was planning to return to Georgia. “Kenneth!” she had exclaimed. “How can you think of living down South again? It’s silly of you even to think of it! I could never think of living down there where they are likely to lynch you at a moment’s notice! It’s too barbaric, too horrible an existence to consider even for a minute!” Kenneth had tried to show her that it wasn’t as bad as it had been painted, that coloured people who minded their own business never had any trouble. But she had been obdurate. Kenneth left the house in a huff, and had never gone back again. What silly notions women have, he had thought to himself. The reason they talked about the South that way was because of sheer ignorance. As if he couldn’t manage his own affairs and keep away from trouble! Humph! Well rid of the silly creature, and he felt glad he had found out before going in too deep.
But now this was different. Jane had no such absurd notions as those girls up North had. She wasn’t the sort that couldn’t leave promenading down Seventh Avenue in New York or State Street in Chicago or U Street in Washington. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what it meant to live in the North. Hadn’t she been to Atlantic City and New York and Washington with her mother? No, Jane was just the sort of girl who would make the right sort of companion for him in a place like Central City. Intelligent, with a good education, talented musically—she would make an ideal wife. Kenneth found himself musing along in this fashion until aroused by his mother as she called him to supper.
It was darned silly of him, he thought as he arose to comply, to go along thinking like this. He and Jane had spoken no word of love when she had been at home at Christmas. Nor had their letters been other than those of good friends. But hadn’t she written him almost every week since she left? She must think something of him to have done that. He determined that as soon as he could he would skilfully direct the conversation to the point where he could find out just where he stood. It was time that he was thinking about settling down, anyhow. He would be twenty-nine his next birthday—he was making money—if he acted wisely his future was assured. Yes, he would find out how Jane felt. Both his mother and Mamie liked Jane—and Mr. Phillips had called him “my boy” several times lately and had repeated to him snatches of the letters that Jane had written home. The only doubtful quantity was the attitude of Jane herself.
On Monday morning Kenneth reached the railroad station long before the train arrived. He tried to sit in the filthy little waiting-room with the sign over the door, “FOR COLOURED,” but the air was so oppressive that he chose rather to walk up and down the road outside the station. At last the train came. He walked down towards the engine where the Jim Crow car was. It was half baggage car and half coach. A motley crowd of laughing, shouting Negroes descended, calling out to friends and relatives in the group of Negroes on the ground. Standing on tiptoe, Kenneth strained his eyes to get glimpse of Jane. The windows of the coach were too dirty to see inside. At last she appeared on the platform, dainty, neat, and looking as though she had just emerged from her own room, in spite of the filth and cindery foulness of the coach. Kenneth thought of the simile of a rose springing up from a bed of noisome and unlovely weeds as he hurried forward to help Jane with her bags through the crowd of coloured people that flocked around the steps.
Jane greeted him cordially enough, her eyes shining with pleasure at seeing him again. Kenneth, however, felt a vague disappointment. He had let his thoughts run riot while she had been away. So far as he was concerned, the only things necessary were the actual asking of the all-important question and the choosing of a wedding-day. As he followed her to his car, he turned over in his mind just what it was that disappointed him so in her greeting. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but she would have greeted Bob or any other man just as warmly and he would not have felt jealous at all. Maybe she’s tired from the ride in that dirty and noisy car? She’ll be quite different when I go over to see her to-night, he thought.
He inquired regarding her trip—was it pleasant? “Ugh, it was horrible!” she replied, shuddering at the memory of it. “I had a Pullman as far as Atlanta, but there I had to change to that dirty old Jim Crow car. There was a crowd of Negroes who had three or four quarts of cheap liquor. They were horrible. Why, they even had the nerve to offer me a drink! And the conductor must have told everybody on the train that I was up front, because all night long there was a constant procession of white men passing up and down the coach looking at me in a way that made my blood boil. I didn’t dare go to sleep, because I didn’t know what might happen. It was awful!”
She sat silent as she lived over again the horror of the ride. Then, shaking off her mood, she turned to him with a cheerful smile. “Thank Goodness, it’s over now, and I don’t want to think of it any more than I can help. Tell me all about yourself and what you’ve been doing and everything,” she finished all in a breath.
He told her briefly what had been going on, of his plans for the hospital, of the meeting at Reverend Wilson’s, and other items of interest about life in Central City, until they had arrived at her home. He waited for an invitation to come in, but in the excitement of seeing her mother and father again, she forgot all about Kenneth. Placing her bags on the porch, he turned and left after promising to run over for a while that evening.
The time seemed to go by on dragging feet that day. It seemed as though evening never would come. It did at last, however, and as soon as he finished with the last patient, he went over to Jane’s home. Refreshed by a long rest, she greeted him clad in a dress of some filmy blue material. They seated themselves on the porch, shaded by vines from the eyes of passers-by. Over Kenneth there came a feeling of contentment—life had not been easy for him and he had been denied a confidante with whom he could discuss the perplexities he had experienced in Central City. The talk for a time drifted from one topic to another. Before he knew it, Kenneth was telling Jane of his ambitions, of the plans he had made before coming back to Central City, of the successes and failures he had met with, of his hopes for the future. Jane listened without speaking for some time. Life among coloured people is so intense, so earnest, so serious a problem in the South, that never do two intelligent Negroes talk very long before the race problem in some form is under discussion. Jane interrupted Kenneth in the midst of his recital.