XXXVII
McCall was walking impatiently back and forth in front of the hotel, smoking a cigarette, when Robert and Freeman arrived.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Oh, we’ve met before. Trick Track Tribe. I mean Dearborn Publicity Bureau.”
Freeman grinned sheepishly.
“Yes, we’ve met.”
Robert’s attention was diverted by the appearance of a taxi, driving up to the curb. The door opened and a black man stepped out. A black man!
“There’s Williams!” cried Robert.
“Who?”
“Williams. You know, Mac, the hospital—France.”
It was Williams and suddenly, somehow, Robert found himself shaking his hand—the first time in his life that he had ever grasped the hand of any colored man, except George, the chauffeur, and Sam, the gardener.
“You’ve changed.” The colored man was smiling.
“Yes, I’ve got a new view of things. I—I’ve read your articles in The Torch and I want to tell you that I agree with your stand against the Trick Track Tribe. It must be fought through education, not by stirring up a new and stronger prejudice against it, even if we are stronger.”
Williams was pleased. He paid off the driver and explained that he was attending a meeting of state officials, of representative white and black citizens to discuss the race riots.
The taxi pulled away. And suddenly Williams, Ph.D., Harvard, wearer of the Croix de Guerre and editor of The Torch, stood revealed to the white world. The hated color had suddenly reappeared.
“Yeh, look at the nigger! Skunk! Skunk!” the shrill voice of an office boy, a pink-cheeked lad of perhaps thirteen, cried out, as he darted across the crowded street. A stone struck the black man on the arm. Robert saw what was coming. The world which had drifted by a moment before had suddenly become electrified. “Nigger! Get the coon! Get the damn murderer! Nigger! Nigger!” A hundred angry voices, cursing.
A broker’s clerk came yelling. A bank teller followed. Two law students. Salesmen. Shop managers. Men. Boys. Women. Men in work shirts. Men in jazz ties. Men in silk shirts. Black! Black! Black! Black raged through their hearts. They screamed and whooped and ran forward with faces distorted and arms raised.
“Quick, the door!”
Robert started toward the entrance. A white man barred the way. Robert pulled him to one side. The man raised his arm, but Freeman and McCall had sprung forward and were holding him helpless. The black man leaped through the doorway and to safety. McCall and Freeman ran after him, for to aid a Negro then was a crime in the eyes of the mob which hated blackness.
Robert started to follow. Something struck him on the forehead. The cries of the mob and the sound of their footsteps, a man’s laughter, the traffic clangs and noises, the far-off whistle of a patrolman, whirled about him. The world turned red and went spinning round and round—then black, in circles, closing, closing. A confused roar, fainter and ever fainter in his ears. A sensation of being carried, of floating, finally of resting.
Somewhere Robert presently was aware of a light, a flame that was at the same time himself. The flame grew outward and shattered into other flames. The light expanded, throbbing. He was running forward through a grotesquely flaring night, with lights and rockets that screamed overhead and exaggerated every irregularity of the ground, that sent ghastly shadows staggering across the field.
No. He was running down a football field with a leather ball tucked under his arm, a smell of earth and blood and leather in his nostrils and the roar of voices in his ears. No. He tried to remember and found that he was conscious. His eyes fluttered open. Eyes strangely familiar were resting on them.
“Where am I? What’s happened?”
Soft hands were patting him. He felt the pressure of a bandage around his head and a dull pain. He saw a doctor and a woman bending over him. He knew that he was in a hospital. He heard a familiar voice, the woman’s voice, consoling him.
“Robert, Robert, you’re all right now?”
There was a hum of voices. There were tears in her brown eyes. Oh, Dorothy! His heart was racing. Dorothy. No. Yes, it was Dorothy. Dorothy of the hospital. Dorothy who had wept once before, in Paris. Dorothy who had kissed him then. Yes. His head was clear. He raised himself to a sitting position.
She was holding his hand. His own eyes were wet.
“Why? Why?—”
“Robert, Robert.” She was bending over him. Her hair was brushing against his face. He felt a glow of warmth. Then her lips against his. Her eyes were closed. He closed his own.
“Dorothy.” His head was clear. He remembered everything. “But why are you here?”
“I heard you had been hurt. I thought—I thought it was serious. But it isn’t. I’m so glad,” she sobbed.
“But why did you come?”
“Because—because—” She looked full into his eyes and he could see little sparks of light dancing in them. “I love you, Robert.”
His heart gave a bound.
“But—” He remembered. Oh, yes, McCall. “But I thought that Jack Levin—”
“No.” She shook her head. “We are of different faiths. We—”
“But—you told me—your ideas—”
“No, we decided it was better not—”
“Because—”
“Because we are of different faiths—and because—” Was she laughing or sobbing?—“because I loved you—yes, it was you—all the time.”
“Dorothy! and—”
“Yes, I knew it from the beginning.”
THE END