What Answer?. Anna E. Dickinson
not one! It gets worse and worse all the time, and it takes a deal of faith to hold on; but the good Lord knows best, and it'll be right after a while, anyhow! And now that's straight!" pulling a soft slipper on the lame foot, and putting its mate by his side; then going off to pour out the tea, and dish up the stew, and add a touch or two to the appetizing supper-table.
"It's as good as a feast,"—taking a bite out of her nice home-made bread—"better'n a feast, to think of you in that place; and I can't scarcely realize it yet. It seems too fine to be true."
"That's the way I've felt all the month, mother! It has been just like a dream to me, and I keep thinking surely I'm asleep and will waken to find this is just an air-castle I've been building, or 'a vision of the night,' as the good book says."
"Well, it's a blessed vision, sure enough! and I hope to the good Lord it'll last;—but you won't if you make a vision of your supper in that way. You just eat, Abram! and have done your talking till you're through, if you can't do both at once. Talking's good, but eating's better when you're hungry; and it's my opinion you ought to be hungry, if you ain't."
So the teacups were filled and emptied, and the spoons clattered, and the stew was eaten, and the baked potatoes devoured, and the bread-and-butter assaulted vigorously, and general havoc made with the good things and substantial things before and between them; and then, this duty faithfully performed, the wreck speedily vanished away; and cups and forks, spoons and plates, knives and dishes, cleaned and cupboarded, Mrs. Franklin came, and, drawing away the book over which he was poring, said, while she smoothed face and hair once more, "Come, Abram, what is it?"
"What's what, mother?" with a little laugh.
"Something ails you, sonny. That's plain enough. I know when anything's gone wrong with ye, sure, and something's gone wrong to-day."
"O mother! you worry about me too much, indeed you do. If I'm a little tired or out of sorts—which I haven't any right to be, not here—or quiet, or anything, you think somebody's been hurting me, or abusing me, or that everything's gone wrong with me, when I do well enough all the time."
"Now, Abram, you can't deceive me—not that way. My eyes is mother's eyes, and they see plain enough, where you're concerned, without spectacles. Who's been putting on you to-day? Somebody. You don't carry that down look in your face and your eyes for nothing, I found that out long ago, and you've got it on to-night."
"O mother!"
"Don't you 'O mother' me! I ain't going to be put off in that way, Abram, an' you needn't think it. Has Mr. Surrey been saying anything hard to you?"
"No, indeed, mother; you needn't ask that."
"Nor none of the foremen?"
"None."
"Has Snipe been round?"
"Hasn't been near the office since Mr. Surrey dismissed him."
"Met him anywhere?"
"Nein!" laughing, "I haven't laid eyes on him."
"Well, the men have been saying or doing something then."
"N-no; why, what an inquisitor it is!"
"'N-no.' You don't say that full and plain, Abram. Something has been going wrong with the men. Now what is it? Come, out with it."
"Well, mother, if you will know, you will, I suppose; and, as you never get tired of the story, I'll go over the whole tale.
"So long as I was Mr. Surrey's office-boy, to make his fires, and sweep and dust, and keep things in order, the men were all good enough to me after their fashion; and if some of them growled because they thought he favored me, Mr. Given, or some one said, 'O, you know his mother was a servant of Mrs. Surrey for no end of years, and of course Mr. Surrey has a kind of interest in him'; and that put everything straight again.
"Well! you know how good Mr. Willie has been to me ever since we were little boys in the same house—he in the parlor and I in the kitchen; the books he's given me, and the chances he's made me, and the way he's put me in of learning and knowing. And he's been twice as kind to me ever since I refused that offer of his."
"Yes, I know, but tell me about it again."
"Well, Mr. Surrey sent me up to the house one day, just while Mr. Willie was at home from college, and he stopped me and had a talk with me, and asked me in his pleasant way, not as if I were a 'nigger,' but just as he'd talk to one of his mates, ever so many questions about myself and my studies and my plans; and I told him what I wanted—how hard you worked, and how I hoped to fit myself to go into some little business of my own, not a barber-shop, or any such thing, but something that'd support you and keep you like a lady after while, and that would help me and my people at the same time. For, of course," I said, "every one of us that does anything more than the world expects us to do, or better, makes the world think so much the more and better of us all."
"What did he say to that?"
"I wish you'd seen him! He pushed back that beautiful hair of his, and his eyes shone, and his mouth trembled, though I could see he tried hard to hold it still, and put up his hand to cover it; and he said, in a solemn sort of way, 'Franklin, you've opened a window for me, and I sha'n't forget what I see through it to-day.' And then he offered to set me up in some business at once, and urged hard when I declined."
"Say it all over again, sonny; what was it you told him?"
"I said that would do well enough for a white man; that he could help, and the white man be helped, just as people were being and doing all the time, and no one would think a thought about it. But, sir," I said, "everybody says we can do nothing alone; that we're a poor, shiftless set; and it will be just one of the master race helping a nigger to climb and to stand where he couldn't climb or stand alone, and I'd rather fight my battle alone."
"Yes, yes! well, go on, go on. I like to hear what followed."
"Well, there was just a word or two more, and then he put out his hand and shook mine, and said good by. It was the first time I ever shook hands with a white gentleman. Some white hands have shaken mine, but they always made me feel that they were white and that mine was black, and that it was a condescension. I felt that, when they didn't mean I should. But there was nothing between us. I didn't think of his skin, and, for once in my life, I quite forgot I was black, and didn't remember it again till I got out on the street and heard a dirty little ragamuffin cry, 'Hi! hi! don't that nagur think himself foine?' I suspect, in spite of my lameness, I had been holding up my head and walking like a man."
In spite of his lameness he was holding up his head and walking like a man now; up and down and across the little room, trembling, excited, the words rushing in an eager flow from his mouth. His mother sat quietly rocking herself and knitting. She knew in this mood there was nothing to be said to him; and, indeed, what had she to say save that which would add fuel to the flame?
"Well!"—a long sigh—"after that Mr. Surrey doubled my wages, and was kinder to me than ever, and watched me, as I saw, quite closely; and that was the way he found out about Mr. Snipe.
"You see Mr. Snipe had been very careless about keeping the books; would come down late in the mornings, just before Mr. Surrey came in, and go away early in the afternoons, as soon as he had left. Of course, the books got behindhand every month, and Mr. Snipe didn't want to stay and work overhours to make them up. One day he found out, by something I said, that I understood bookkeeping, and tried me, and then got me to take them home at night and go over them. I didn't know then how bad he was doing, and that I had no business to shield him, and all went smooth enough till the day I was too sick to get down to the office, and two of the books were at home. Then Mr. Surrey discovered the whole thing. There was a great row, it seems; and Mr. Surrey examined the books, and found, as he was pleased to say, that I'd kept them in first-rate style; so he dismissed Mr. Snipe on the spot, with six months' pay—for you know he never does anything by halves—and put me in his place.
"The men don't like it, I know, and haven't liked it, but of course they can't say