THE MASTER-WORD.*
THouGH the problem dealt with so frankly and courageously by Mrs. Hammond in her very interesting novel may in a sense lack actuality to home-keeping English readers, it has much more than a merely speculative or psychological interest for those who are disposed, in the higher sense of the phrase, to think Imperially. The colour question has long confronted us in all our Colonies and dependencies; it has lately assumed momentous significance in South Africa, and its tragical aspect in Cape Colony was recently illustrated in that powerful but pessimistic romance, Souls in Bondage. Mrs. Hammond's book, however, is animated by a higher aim than that of the literary artist. It is obviously not her purpose merely to harrow her readers by the realistic delineation of the unmerited sufferings of the innocent. The story of Elvira Sampson points the terrible evils of miscegenation painfully enough ; but while it shows how the sins of the fathers may be visited on the children, here is no gratuitous piling up of misery on the head of the guiltless : rather is it the writer's aim to indicate how the wrong can be • The Mastor-Word: a Story of Ow South To-day. By L. H. Hammond. London • id•mraillaut and Co. [68.]
at least partially repaired. The main " motive " of the story, thanks to the growth of a healthier public opinion, is probably no longer typical of the Southern life of to-day; that it was once of common occurrence cannot be denied any more than that the danger it illustrates has not yet been wholly eliminated.
The story opens dramatically with the meeting between Margaret Lawton, while her husband is lying at death's door, and his coloured mistress. He recovers, but husband and wife are not reconciled until he dies a year or so after- wards. Margaret resolves to do her best for the woman's child, who has been deserted by her mother, and Elvira, or Viry as she is called, in ignorance of her antecedents is brought up as a companion of Margaret's daughter Elizabeth, for whom she conceives a passionate admiration. Viry's mother, it is mentioned, was three parts white ; but the negro strain, though faint, is unmistakable in her child, and while treated with perfect kindness by the Lawtons, she is regarded as one of the household rather than of the family, and educated at a coloured school. The discovery of phosphate mines in the neighbourhood converts an agricultural into an industrial district, and brings about a great influx of "mean" whites and coloured miners. Schools are started, and Viry is appointed a teacher in a school for negro children. The tragedy of her position, however, is this: that, believing herself to be a white woman, she has an invincible dislike and contempt for the coloured folk among whom her lot is chiefly cast. Furthermore, being ignorant of her parentage, and consequently unable to realise the extent of her indebted- ness to Margaret, she misinterprets the coldly correct attitude of her benefactress, and regards her with a certain amount of sullen resentment. Her attitude of rebellion against her lot —that of a beautiful, well-educated young woman "shut up to lifelong association with unkempt negro children "—is vividly expressed in the following searching passage :—
"She might have borne that, she felt, if it had come to her of her own free choice. She had been quick to see and to appreciate the unselfish devotion which had moved her white teachers to spend themselves for an alien and inferior race : she could have done that, too. But to her, she thought bitterly, even the comfort of sacrifice was denied. She was to spend herself, not because a higher nature freely bent to the burdens and ignorance of a lower one, but because, being a negro, she belonged with negroes, and earned her bread among her kind as a matter of course. And yet she was white, she was white ! She clenched her hands with a tearless groan. Why had this curse come upon her ? It did not fall on every mongrel, she told herself once more, in voiceless misery. There had been mulatto girls at school—plenty of them; but they were not like her. The sight of them had always sent a sick chill to her heart, as it might to a cripple's heart to see another deformity like his own ; but she had nerved herself, again and again, to speak to one and another of them of these awful things, and they had scarcely understood her at all. They were proud of their white blood, many of them, and of the superior intelligence with which it had dowered them. They were more or less contemptuous of their black associates, but after all it was a kindly, tolerant contempt; and so long as they were allowed to lead they did not object to a black following. They had the white blood, but it merely served to quicken the black nature ; while for her the black blood had poisoned a white woman's life. She had not understood it as a child. She had puzzled herself over her anger at the attempts at intimacy of her coloured playmates. She had wondered why Mrs. Lawton could be so friendly with people, the mere sight of whom made her bristle with antipathy. But slowly, with years of silent pondering and suffering, the dreadful truth had been made clear. They knew Mrs. Lawton was white: she knew it : and she could afford from her height to stoop to tho lowly friends who looked up to her in admiration, and who would never dream of themselves crossing the line which her condescen- sion might overstep. But if they had not understood that she was white! If they had treated her as an equal; if their women had dared to caress her, or their men to look admiration—Viry set her teeth with a quick intaking of her breath. Oh, she loathed them, she loathed them ! And this grand lady, with her beauty, her gentle ways, her easy willingness, not to assert her superiority, her apparent indifference to her praises in all men's mouths—she hated her, too. It was easy enough for her to visit the depths occasionally, in the most beautiful and becoming raiment, and to dispense here and there a drop of her surfeit of ease and comfort, that all that dark underworld might chant her praises and adore ! It was easy enough, apparently, from her rose-crowned heights, to calmly thrust another, her fellow in blood and brain, into that black pit of misery, and complacently expect her to be happy there and to give thanks for her pleasant lot. The hypocrisy of it, the sheer brute callousness of this modern saint
The isolation of her position is aggravated by lack of com- panionship. "She would not go near the negro churches,
and while she would have been admitted to the gallery of any of the white churches, she would not go as an inferior." To make matters worse, Viry cherishes an entirely unrequited affection for a young mine-manager who is desperately in love with Bess Lawton, and only endures Viry because of her devotion to his idol. When finally Bess, after long flouting of her faithful suitor, is conquered by his constancy and heroism, the cup of Viry's humiliation and misery brims over. She upbraids and insults her mistress, and tries to take her own life. Margaret, on her side, not only rescues the poor girl, but makes a further sacrifice of pride and tells her the whole truth as to her parentage. This act of confidence conquers Viry, and the new knowledge of Margaret's grief reconciles her to the life of effort and sacrifice against which she had previously rebelled.
Such in bare outline is the plot of a story which, if not entirely convincing, is marked by intimate knowledge of the conditions of the colour problem in the South and animated by a fine spirit of humanity and justice. If, as the preface declares, the purpose of the book faithfully represents the thoughts and hopes of the South, the outlook is more reassuring than we are sometimes led to suppose. But we may note that throughout the story the attitude of the men, even the best of them, argues a lower standard of tolerance and consideration than that of their womankind, and that the segregation of the races is plainly indicated as the best solution of the difficulty.
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