498
PARTISAN REVIEW
because her father had seemed to change sides. But she was touched
by the sense, so little formulated, so fleeting as scarcely to establish·
itself in her memory, that something other than the question, or the
problem itself, was involved here. She barely perceived, yet she did
perceive, her mother's quick glance at her father under lowered lids.
It was something more than a glance of surprise. Neither Margaret
nor Lucy, of course, knew anything about the sentence from Hazlitt.
But this was one of the
mom~nts
when the sentence had occurred
to Elwin and with it the explosion of light. And his wife
and daughter had heard the event in his voice. For Elwin
an illumination, but a dark illumination, was thrown around
the matter that concerned them. It seemed to him- not sud–
denly, for it had been advancing in his mind for some hours now–
that in the aspect of his knowledge of death, all men were equal
in their responsibility. The two bus conductors, Lucy's and his own,
the boy with his face contorted in rational rage against the injustice
he suffered, Margaret the maid with her genteel malice-all of them,
quite as much as he himself, bore their own blame. Exemption was
not given by age or youth, or sex, or color, or condition of life. It
was the sense of this that made his voice so strange at his own dinner–
table, as if it came not q1erely from another place but another time.
"Why not?" he said again. "Why not, Margaret?"
Margaret looked at her father's face and tried to answer. She
seriously marshalled her thoughts and, as always, the sight of his
daughter actually thinking touched Elwin profoundly. "It's because
-because society didn't give her a chance," she said slowly. "She
has a handicap. Because she's colored. She has to struggle so hard–
against prejudice. It's so
hard
for her."
"It's true," Elwin said. "It's very hard for her. But it's hard for
Millie too." Millie had been with the Elwins for nearly seven years.
Some months ago she had left them to nurse a dying sister in the
South.
:Margaret of course knew what her father meant, that Millie,
despite "society," was warm and good and capable. Her answer was
quick, too quick. "Oh, Millie has a slave-psychology," she said loftily.
Really, Elwin thought, Miss Hoxie went too far. He felt a kind
of disgust that a child should have been given such a phrase to use.
It was a good school, he approved of its theory; but it must not give
Margaret such things to say. He wondered if Margaret had submitted
the question of Millie to Miss Hoxie.
If
she had, and if this was the ·
answer she had been given, his daughter had been, yes, corrupted.
He said, "You should not say such tl;lings about Millie. She is a good
