Dark Princess quotes

Summer is come with bursting flower and promise of perfect fruit.

Rain is rolling down Nile and Niger. Summer sings on the sea where giant ships carry busy worlds, while mermaids swarm the shores. Earth is pregnant. Life is big with pain and evil and hope. Summer in blue New York; summer in gray Berlin;

There were many passengers walking, talking, laughing; but none of them spoke to Matthew. They spoke about him, noting his tall, lean form and dark brown face, the stiff, curled mass of his sinewy hair, and the midnight of his angry eyes.

They spoke about him, and he was acutely conscious of every word.

Each word heard and unheard pierced him and quivered in the quick. Yet he leaned stiff and grim, gazing into the sea, his back toward all. He saw the curled grace of the billows, the changing blues and greens;

He glimpsed faces at times, intelligent, masterful. They had brains; if they knew him they would choose him as companion, friend; but they did not know him. They did not want to know him. They glanced at him momentarily and then looked away.

They were afraid to be noticed noticing him.

And he? He would have killed himself rather than have them dream he would accept a greeting, much less a confidence. He looked past and through and over them with blank unconcern.

Or a daughter in marriage? There was a blonde and blue-eyed girl at the next table catching his eye. Faugh! She was for public sale and thought him a South American, an Egyptian, or a rajah with money. He turned quickly away.

Oh, he was lonesome; lonesome and homesick with a dreadful homesickness.

After all, in leaving white, he had also left black America—all that he loved and knew. God! he never dreamed how much he loved that soft, brown world which he had so carelessly, so unregretfully cast away.

What would he not give to clasp a dark hand now, to hear a soft Southern roll of speech, to kiss a brown cheek? To see warm, brown, crinkly hair and laughing eyes. God—he was lonesome. So utterly, terribly lonesome.

And then⁠—he saw the Princess!

Many, many times in after years he tried to catch and rebuild that first wildly beautiful fantasy which the girl’s face stirred in him. He knew well that no human being could be quite as beautiful as she looked to him then.

“Then, too, I was firm in my Hampton training; desert and hard work were bound to tell.

Prejudice was a miasma that character burned away.

I believed thoroughly. I had literally pounded my triumphant way through school and life. Of course I had made insult and rebuff here and there, but I ignored them, laughed at them, and went my way.

… being out of it now and then, he had assumed that this was his world, his people, from the high and beautiful lady whom he worshiped more and more, even to the Egyptians, Indians and Arab who seemed slightly, but very slightly, aloof or misunderstanding.

Suddenly now there loomed plain and clear the shadow of a color line within a color line, a prejudice within prejudice, and he and his again the sacrifice.

His eyes became somber and did not lighten even when the Princess spoke.

We American blacks are very common people. My grandfather was a whipped and driven slave; my father was never really free and died in jail. My mother plows and washes for a living. We come out of the depths—the blood and mud of battle.

And from just such depths, I take it, came most of the worthwhile things in this old world. If they didn’t, God help us.

”

It was to Matthew an amazing situation—one he could not for the life of him comprehend. These men were at the bottom of life—scullions. They had no pride of work. Who could have pride in such work! But they despised themselves.

God was in the first cabin, overeating, guzzling, gambling, sleeping. They despised what He despised.

He despised Negroes. He despised Italians, unless they were rich and noble. He despised scullion’s work. All these things the scullions despised.

“We’re satisfied—that’s the trouble,” said the editor.

“We’re too damn satisfied. We’ve done so much more with ourselves than we ever dreamed of doing that we’re sitting back licking our chops and patting each other on the back.”

“Well,” said the young physician, “we have done well, haven’t we?”

Been here a week and going back tomorrow. Hoped I might run across you. I feel like a man out of a straitjacket. I tell you this being a minister today is—is—well, it’s a hard job.”

“My experience is,” said Matthew, “that life at best is no cinch.”

The minister smiled sympathetically. “I tell you,” he said, “let’s have a good time. I want to go to the theater and see movies and hear music.

Matthew looked at him. His patience was about at an end, and the man saw something in his eye; he added as he turned away: “Young man, my father fought and died to set you free.”

“Well, he did a damned poor job,” said Matthew, and he went into the smoking-room and into the toilet and shut and locked the door.

It was nearly ten at night when dinner for the porters was ready, for the passengers had stuffed themselves at lunch and were not hungry until late; the food left was cold and scarce, and the cooks too tired to bother.

And Matthew passed the gate. He spoke to not a single porter, and none spoke to him. All of them avoided each other. They had failed—they had been defeated without a fight.

“We’re damn cowards,” muttered Matthew as he climbed aboard.

“Any man’s a coward in midwinter when he’s got a wife, a mortgage, two children in school, and only one job in sight,” answered the old porter who followed him.

“We’re damn cowards,” muttered Matthew as he climbed aboard.

“Any man’s a coward in midwinter when he’s got a wife, a mortgage, two children in school, and only one job in sight,” answered the old porter who followed him.

“Good,” growled Matthew. “Let’s all go to hell.”

He had not seen it before—he had not wholly realized it. Yet he must go on. He could not stop. What had other men thought when they murdered in a great cause? Suddenly he seemed to know.

It was not the dead who paid⁠—it was the living; not the killed, but the Killer, who knew and suffered.

This was Hell, and he was in it. He must stay in it. He must go through with it. But, Christ! the horror, the infamy, the flaming pain of the thing!

1924, January, to April, 1926

Winter. Winter, jail and death.

Winter, three winters long, with only the green of two little springs and the crimson of two short autumns; but ever with hard, cold winter in triumph over all. Cold streets and hard faces; white death in a white world;

She recognized politics as a means of private income, and her shrewd advice not only increased the office revenue, but slowly changed it to safer and surer forms.

“Colored cabarets are all right,” said Sara, “but white railroads pay better.”

She pointed out that not only would the World-at-Play pay for privilege and protection, but the World-at-Work would pay even more. Retail merchants, public service corporations, financial exploiters, all wanted either to break the law or to secure more pliable laws;

“I keep telling you, Sammy, you’ve got to be something more than the ordinary colored Chicago politician before you can take the next step. You’ve got to be popular among respectable people.”

“Respectable, hell!” remarked Sammy.

“Precisely,” said Sara; “the hell of machine politics has got to be made to look respectable for ordinary consumption. Now you need something to jack you up in popular opinion.

Life was always tense and rushing there—a murder, a happy mother, thieves, strikers, scabs, school children, and hard workers; a strange face, a man going into business, a girl going to hell, a woman saved.

The whole organism was neither good nor bad. It was good and bad.

Rickety buildings, noise, smells, noise, work—hard, hard work—

“And in politics? Humph! Wonder just what his game is? I wish he’d grin a little more and do the glad hand act!”

“Do you want the earth?” asked Sara.

It was Christmas time, 1924, when Matthew came back to Virginia after five years of absence. Winter had hardly begun, and the soft glow of Autumn still lingered on the fields.

The bridal pair stepped into the new Studebaker with a hired chauffeur and glided away. Matthew looked down at his slim white bride. A tenderness and pity swept over him. He slipped his arm about her shoulders.

“Be careful of the veil,” said Sara.

In Springfield, Matthew was again thrust into the world. He shrank at first and fretted over it. Most of the white legislators put up at the new Abraham Lincoln—a thoroughly modern hostelry, convenient and even beautiful in parts. Matthew did not apply.

He had gone there once—one summer, an age ago. He had been refused food at two restaurants, ordered out of a movie, not allowed to sit in a boardwalk pavilion, and not even permitted to bathe in the ocean.

“I will not go to Atlantic City. If I must go to hell, I’ll wait until I’m dead,” he burst out bitterly.

Sara let it go. “Oh, I don’t really mind,” she said, “only I’ve never been there, and I sort of wanted to see what it’s like. Never mind, we’ll go somewhere else.” But they didn’t; they stayed in Chicago.

It was his business. They did not live broadly or deeply, but they ruled. There was no sense blinking that fact. Matthew often forwarded registered express packages to Sara.

And he came to realize that legislating was not passing laws; it was mainly keeping laws from being passed.

Then there were the reformers. He held them—most of them—in respectful pity; palliators, surface scratchers. He listened to them endlessly and gravely. He read their tracts conscientiously, but only now and then could he vote as they asked. They were so ignorant—so futile.

“But how else? Are you going to sit down and let these girls go to death and hell?”

“I’m not responsible for this world, madam.”

“Listen—I know a woman—a woman—like you. She’s just been elected International President of the Box-Makers. She can talk. She knows. She’s been everywhere. She’s a lady and educated. I’m just a poor, dumb thing. I know what I want—but I can’t say it.

Matthew’s personal relations with his wife filled him with continual astonishment.

He had never dreamed that two human beings could share the closest of intimacies and remain unacquainted strangers.

He thought that the yielding of a woman to a man was a matter of body, mind, and soul—a complete blending.

He would not in the future, more than in the past, be hemmed in by petty moral scruples. He still honestly believed that burglary was ethically no worse than Big Business. But thereafter in each particular instance he was going to be the judge.

He would buy and sell if he so wished, but he would not be bought and sold.

He was glad to go before that club and talk openly and cleanly of traction and Superpower.

“Wait a minute,” said Corruthers. “

What are we going to say to him?

I couldn’t think of anything. Of course we might pinch him for a little cash.”

He had reached his nadir. Then he held up his head fiercely.

From nadir he would climb! But even as he muttered this half aloud, he did not believe it. From such depths men did not climb. They wallowed there.

Finally, about April first, a week before the primary election, Sara decided that it was time for her final conference. She gave up entirely the idea of a mass meeting. That could come after the primary, when Matthew’s nomination was accomplished.

She would have said the things she had planned to say, but she did not. All the greater things were forgotten. She only said as he stared upon her with wild light in his eyes:

“The Princess that I worshiped is become the working-woman whom I love. Life has beaten out the gold to this fine stuff.”

And then with hanging head he said: “But I, ah, I am unchanged. I am the same flying dust.”

She walked toward him and put both hands upon his shoulders and said,

“Flying dust, that is it. Flying dust that fills the heaven and turns the sunlight into jewels.”

And then suddenly she stood straight before him. “Matthew, Matthew!” she cried. “See, I came to save you! I came to save your soul from hell.”

(What does he mean—who is this woman?)

“I’d rather go to hell than to Congress.”

“I’m through with liars, thieves, and hypocrites.”

The miracle is Spring. Spring in the heart and throat of the world.

Spring in Virginia, Spring in India, Spring in Chicago. Shining rain and crimson song, roll and thunder of symphony in color, shade and tint of flower and vine and budding leaf. Spring—two Springs, with a little Winter between.

Spring—two Springs, with a little Winter between. But what if Spring dip down to Winter and die, shall not a lovelier Spring live again?

Love is eternal Spring.

Life lifts itself out of the Winter of death. Children sing in mud and rain and wind. Earth climbs aloft and sits astride the weeping skies.

We looked frankly forward to raising not all the dead, sluggish, brutalized masses of men, but to discovering among them genius, gift, and ability in far larger number than among the privileged and ruling classes. Search, weed out, encourage; educate, train, and open all doors!

Democracy is not an end; it is a method of aristocracy.

Some day I will show you all we said and planned.

“

India! India! Out of black India the world was born.

Into the black womb of India the world shall creep to die. All that the world has done, India did, and that more marvelously, more magnificently. The loftiest of mountains, the mightiest of rivers, the widest of plains, the broadest of oceans—these are India.

“ ‘

Hell! I’m mating with a throne and a fortune. The darky’s a mere makeweight.

’

“

In those words I died and lived again.

The world crashed about me, but I walked through it; turning, I beckoned my maidens, who came streaming behind.

But to straighten out the tangle and put the feet of our people, and all people who will, on the Path. The first step is to reunite thought and physical work. Their divorce has been a primal cause of disaster.

They that do the world’s work must do it thinking.

The thinkers, dreamers, poets of the world must be its workers. Work is God.”

We would widen the world. It is simply a matter of wanting to. We have bribed white factories with tariffs and monopoly. We are going to bribe black agriculture and poetry. And, Matthew, Work is not God—

Love is God and Work is His Prophet.

”

Gentle culture and the beauty and courtesies of life—they are the real end of all living. But they will not come by the dreaming of the few.

Civilization cannot stand on its apex. It must stand on a broad base, supporting its inevitable and eternal apex of fools.

The tyranny of which you dream is the true method which I too envisage. But choose well the Tyrants—there is Eternal Life! How truly you have put it!

But choose well the Tyrants—there is Eternal Life! How truly you have put it! Workers unite, men cry, while in truth always thinkers who do not work have tried to unite workers who do not think.

Only working thinkers can unite thinking workers.

“For all that we need, and need alone, Time; the alembic Time. The slow majestic march of events, unhurried, sure. Do not be in a hurry, dear Matthew, do not be nervous, do not fret.

Just what I fear I do not know—I cannot say. Perhaps I am ill. I know I am ill. Oh, Matthew, I am afraid. Life is a terrible thing. It looms in dark silence and threatens. It has no bowels of compassion.

Its hidden soul neither laughs nor cries⁠—it just is, is, is!

I am afraid, Matthew—I am in deadly fear. The terror of eternal life is upon me—the Curse of Siva! Come to me, Matthew, come! No, no—do not come until I send. I shall be all right.”

I want to feel the gray mule dragging off my arms, with the sky for heaven and the earth for love. I want to see seed sink in the dead earth. How can you say that life is short?

Life is not short, my darling Matthew, it is endless.

You and I will live for a thousand years and then a thousand years more; and then ten thousand years shall be added to that. Oh, man of little faith!