“George!”
Inherently there was nothing wrong with the name. It was a good name. The “father” of his country and stepfather of Matthew had rejoiced in it. Thus Matthew argued often with himself.
“George!”
It was the name that had driven Matthew as a student away from the Pullman service. It was not really the name—it was the implications, the tone, the sort of bounder who rejoiced to use it. A scullion, ennobled by transient gold and achieving a sleeping-car berth, proclaimed his kingship to the world by one word:
“George!”
So it seemed at least to oversensitive Matthew. It carried all the meaner implications of menial service and largess of dimes and quarters. All this was involved and implied in the right not only to call a man by his first name, but to choose that name for him and compel him to answer to it.
So Matthew, the porter on the Atlanta car of the Pennsylvania Railroad, No. 183, and Southern Railroad, No. 33, rose in his smart and well-fitting uniform and went forward to the impatiently calling voice.
The work was not hard, but the hours were long, and the personal element of tact and finesse, of estimate of human character and peculiarities, must always be to the fore. Matthew had small choice in taking the job. He had arrived with little money and almost ragged. He had undertaken a mission, and after Perigua’s amazing revelation, he felt a compelling duty.
“Do you belong to the porters’ union?” asked the official who hired him.
“No, sir.”
“Going to join?”
“I had not given it a thought. Don’t know much about it.”
“Well, let me tell you, if you want your job and good run, keep out of that union. We’ve got our own company union that serves all purposes, and we’re going to get rid gradually of those radicals and Bolsheviks who are stirring up trouble.”
Matthew strolled over to the room where the porters were resting and talking. It was in an unfinished dark corner of the station under the stairs, with few facilities and no attempt to make it a club room even of the simplest sort.
“Say,” asked Matthew, “what about the union?”
No one answered. Some glanced at him suspiciously. Some went out. Only one finally sidled over and asked what Matthew himself thought of it, but before he could answer, another, passing, whispered in his ear, “Stool pigeon—keep your mouth.” Matthew looked after the trim young fellow who warned him. It was Matthew’s first sight of Jimmie.
The day had been trying. A fussy old lady had kept him trotting. A woman with two children had made him nurse; four Southern gentlemen gambling in the drawing-room had called him “nigger.” He stood by his car at Washington at 9:30 at night, his berths all made. To his delight Jimmie was on the next car, and they soon were chums. Jimmie was Joy. He was not much over twenty-five and so full of jokes and laughter that none, conductors, passengers, or porters, escaped the contagion of his good cheer. His tips were fabulous, and yet he was never merely servile or clownish. He just had bright, straight-eyed good humor, a quick and ready tongue; and he knew his job down to z. He was invaluable to the greenness of Matthew.
“Here comes a brownskin,” he whispered. “Hustle her to bed if she’s got a good berth in the middle of the car, else they’ll find a ‘mistake’ and put her in Lower One,” and he sauntered whistling away as the conductor stepped out. The conductor was going in for the diagram.
“Wait till I get back,” he called, nodding toward the coming passenger.
The young colored woman approached. She was well dressed but a bit prim. She had Lower Six. Matthew sensed trouble, but remembering Jimmie’s admonition, he showed her to her berth. She did not look at him, but he carefully arranged her things.
The conductor came back. “What did you put her there for?” he asked.
“She had a ticket for Six,” Matthew answered. Both he and the conductor knew that she had not bought that ticket in person. In Washington, they would never have sold a colored person going south Number Six—she’d have got One or Twelve or nothing. The conductor was mad. It meant trouble for him all next day from every Southerner who boarded the train.
“Tell her there’s some mistake—I’ll move her later.” But Matthew did not tell her. On the contrary, he suggested to her that he make her berth. She knew why he suggested it, and she resented it, but consented without glancing at him. He sympathized even with her resentment. The conductor swore when he came through with the train conductor and found her retired, but he could do nothing, and Matthew merely professed to have misunderstood.
In the morning after an almost sleepless night and without breakfast, Matthew took special care of the dark lady, and when she was ready, carried her bag to the empty drawing-room and let her dress there in comfort. There again he felt and understood the resentment in her attitude. She could not be treated quite like other passengers. Yet she must know it was not his fault, and perhaps she did not know that the extra work of straightening up the drawing-room at the close of a twenty-four-hour trip was no joke. Still, he smiled in a friendly way at her as he brought her back to the seat which he had arranged first, so as to put her to the least unpleasantness from sitting in some other berth. A woman flounced up and away as the girl sat down.
She thanked Matthew primly. She was afraid to be familiar with a porter. He might presume. She was not pretty, but round-faced, light brown, with black, crinkly hair. She was dressed with taste, and Matthew judged that she was probably a teacher or clerk. She had a cold half-defiant air which Matthew understood. This class of his people were being bred that way by the eternal conflict. Yet, he reflected, they might say something pleasant and have some genial glow for the encouragement of others caught in the same toils.
Then, as ever, his mind flew back to Berlin and to the woman of his dreams and quest. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. He had searched the newspapers and unearthed but one small note in the New York Sunday Times, which proved that the Princess was actually on the Gigantic: “Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Bwodpur, has been visiting quietly with friends while en route from England to her home in India, by way of Seattle.” He smiled a bit dubiously; what had porters and princesses in common?
He came back to earth and began the daily struggle with the brushing and the bags through narrow aisles out to the door; to collect the coats and belongings and carefully brush the clothes of twenty people; to wait for, take, and appear thankful for the tip which was wage and yet might be thrown like alms; to find lost passengers in the smoking-car, toilet, or dining-room and lost hats, umbrellas, packages, and canes—Matthew came to dread the end of his journeys more than all else.
His colored passenger did “not care” to be brushed. As they rolled slowly through the yards, he glanced at her again.
“Anything I can do for you?” he asked.
“Aren’t you a college man?” she asked, rather abruptly.
“I was,” he answered, wiping the sweat from his face.
She regarded him severely. “I should think then you’d be ashamed to be a porter,” she said.
He bit his lips and gathered up her bags.
“It’s a damned good thing for you that I am,” he wanted to say; but he was silent. He only hoped desperately that she would not offer to tip him. But she did; she gave him fifteen cents. He thanked her.