"I meant just what my statement said," she replied.
"Didn't you know that you were doing a very wrong thing?"
"I just did it for fun. I did not think that it might injure the Ku Klux Klan."
"I don't care how much it injured the Ku Klux Klan; it deserves all the criticism it gets. What I dislike about it is that it causes comment about one of my employees and subjects my friend Springer to ridicule."
"Oh," she said, laughing, "I'm not shedding any tears over Springer. He should be a little more accurate in his reports. If he had reported the incident accurately and without prejudice he would not have been embarrassed by the exposure."
"Don't let anything like that happen again around here."
"I promise you I'll not."
Rastus tried to avoid Ruth. Next to Springer he was the worst beat man in town. When he saw Ruth enter one door of the president's office he would go out the other door. If he was in the banking room near the part of the room where she entered he immediately had business over on the other side of the room. It was almost noon when she met him face to face in one of the doors. "How are you, Rastus?" she said and then added, "Haven't been visited by any more Kluxers, have you?"
"No'em, I ain't. You all thought you had a good joke on me, but I ain't sech an ignoranimus as what you all might think. I spicioned all the time that it was you, Miss Babcock."
"If you suspected all the time that it was I, why did you become so frightened?"
"Me sca'ed! Well, I guess not. When you all stepped out from behind that elevator I says to myself that's Miss Babcock tryin' to play a joke on me and I says I'll have to hep her to have a little fun, so I jest 'tended like I'se sca'ed, jest to please you, Miss Ruth."
"Is that so, Rastus?"
"'Deed, it is. I'se a good spo't, I is."
"I thank you very much for the pleasure afforded me," she said, laughing.
"Yas, 'em, you's welcome, but I ain't gwine to give you sech pleasure no mo'."
"That's all right, Rastus. I consider that you have made your full contribution."
It was the middle of the afternoon. Ruth had not been busy for a half-hour. She had been reading a novel. It was a story of a girl who was about to marry a man who was in every respect a cultured gentleman—intelligent and refined in thought, dignified in manner, and of magnetic personality. A few weeks before the date set for the wedding the girl received a shock. She was informed that the man whom she was about to marry was one-sixteenth negro. She was furious and could scarcely restrain her hands from clutching the throat of her informant. "It's a lie, it's a lie!" she shouted. She was sure that the story had been invented by a jealous rival who wished to torment her. The next time she was with her lover she could not but think of this. She thought that she saw a slight olive tint to the skin, that there were dark circles at the base of his finger nails and that his nose was slightly flat and nostrils a little broad. Surely she imagined these things. She continued to worry until the man persuaded her to tell him the cause of her distress. The man admitted that it was the truth and offered to release her from the engagement. The author then shows a great conflict in the mind of the girl between social standards and love. In the end love triumphed and the girl married the man with the strain of colored blood in his veins.
When Ruth reached this point in the story she threw the book violently on the floor and exclaimed, "Rot, rot, that makes me sick!"
"That's treating the book rough." She turned and saw Pearl Gardner, one of the bookkeepers, standing in the door.
"Come in, Pearl, and have a chair."
"I wasn't busy and thought I would come in and see what you were doing. I arrived just in time to see the demonstration. I didn't know that you ever struck fire like that, ha, ha, ha."
"Now, you quit laughing at me. I got so disgusted at that story."
"What was it?"
"A girl was in love with a man, and just before their marriage she learned that he was part negro."
"Did she give him up?"
"No, that's the disgusting part of it. She married him."
"He must have been pretty white if she didn't know it."
"He was only a sixteenth negro."
"I don't blame her then if she loved him."
"What! You don't mean to say that you would have had her marry a man with negro blood in his veins, do you?"
"Why not, if she loved him? Isn't love the greatest thing in the world?"
"Yes, love that is rightly directed, is the greatest thing in the world; but love that violates the great racial instincts, that runs counter to the experience of mankind, that does violence to the highest social standards—is love run wild and does not lead to the greatest good."
"I don't see that it would do any harm if the man was so white that the girl did not know it when she fell in love with him."
"It would violate the racial instincts within her as well as the social standards of the race. The white race, even if it desired to do so, could not absorb the negro race in the United States through intermarriage. There is an inevitable reversion to type. If you had a race seven-eighths white and one-eighth negro you would have a race that was essentially negro in its physical structure and racial tendencies."
"Ruth, I believe you must be getting ready to become a lecturer on the race question. Of course, I don't believe intermarriage would be a good thing for the country, but I don't think we should try to keep the negro down. I heard my father say last night that one objection he had to the Ku Klux Klan is that one of its purposes is to oppress the negro."
"The Klan advocates the supremacy of the white race. I do not understand that that means to oppress anyone that is a member of another race. I recently read a good article on 'The Necessity of Keeping the White Race Supreme in the Affairs of the World.' Anyone of average intelligence who would read that article would certainly believe that there is need of the white race presenting a solid front against the rising tide of the dark skinned races. This article stated that in insisting on the maintenance of white supremacy the Klan is insisting on the preservation and propagation of the ideals and institutions that experience has shown to be the best for the race. Democracy is born of the white race. It has found its greatest advocates among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It has reached its greatest development in America. It was spread to Europe, dethroning kings, and is now making inroads into the caste system of Asia. The great mass of the dark skinned races are subservient to kings and emperors and are of such a temperament that autocratic governments have flourished among them, consequently we cannot trust our democratic institutions in their hands. He states that white men should rule in democracies because they have shown the greater capacity to govern themselves and establish democratic institutions. The American home is a home that is based on the love of one man for one woman and requires a freedom of choice in marriage which is seldom found among the dark races.
"Christianity was born of the white race and promoted by them, and while it is destined to become universal, yet if the institutions which support it should be controlled by pagan people the source of the supply of missionaries and Christian teachings would be destroyed.
"The white race has aims and ideals that are different from the other races, as we believe, superior; and when the Klan declares for white supremacy it declares for the preservation of those ideals and institutions that have been found the most helpful in the development of life. That these should survive will, in the end, prove advantageous to all races.
"Pearl, he made plain to me that the Klan is not wanting to oppress inferior races but to help them to a higher development; but in order to do that the white race must protect itself. If I can find that article I would like to have you read it. I am not sure whether I kept the paper or not."
"Don't go to any trouble to find it. I'm not much interested in such questions. I'd rather read a wild-west story or a good love story. Say, Ruth, what do you think! Last night I was out riding with Mr. Golter and he said that he had a letter from his sister that had just returned from New York, and she said that they are beginning to wear the skirts longer. Of course if they are wearing them longer in New York it will only be a short time until they wear them longer here."
"I wouldn't object to their being a little longer, but I hope they won't go back to the long skirts that swept the streets," Ruth remarked.
"I hope they won't get them down to the heels, but if it gets to be the style what can you do but wear them? One mustn't be out of style."
"One does not need to wear the extreme styles in order to keep from looking odd. You see I do not wear them to my knees, neither do I intend to wear them sweeping the streets. I am going to dress, so far as possible, so that I will not appear odd nor be uncomfortable either in mind or body."
"I don't agree with you. You'd just as well be dead as out of style. Say, girlie, I had some ride last night. We rode about fifty miles and did some real speeding. Mr. Golter's a real man and has a real car. You know he's been wanting to go with me for some time."
"No, I did not know that," said Ruth.
"Well, he has, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to believe that I wanted to go with him. Last night I consented and found him better company than I had expected. Today I had to go to his desk for some records while he was out of the room and I saw a letter which he was writing to his sister. I saw my name, and I didn't do a thing but look. Oh, boy, he was sure writing some nice things about me. I think that's a pretty good way to find out what a fellow thinks of you, don't you?"
"You might find out that way if you were sure he hadn't left it there on purpose for you to see."
"Oh, I'm sure he didn't intend for me to see it."
Mr. Stover called Ruth to take dictation, and the conversation came to an abrupt close.
That evening as Ruth was leaving the bank Golter stopped her and asked the privilege of taking her to dinner and to the opera. She made as polite an excuse as possible. While she was conversing with him, Pearl Gardner was watching them closely, endeavoring to catch every word.