Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
Melanctha Herbert all her life long, loved and wanted good, kind
and considerate people. Jefferson Campbell was all the things that
Melanctha had ever wanted. Jefferson was a strong, well built, good
looking, cheery, intelligent and good mulatto. And then at first he
had not cared to know Melanctha, and when he did begin to know her
he had not liked her very well, and he had not thought that she would
ever come to any good. And then Jefferson Campbell was so very gentle.
Jefferson never did some things like other men, things that now were
beginning to be ugly, for Melanctha. And then too Jefferson Campbell
did not seem to know very well what it was that Melanctha really
wanted, and all this was making Melanctha feel his power with her
always getting stronger.
Dr. Campbell came in every day to see 'Mis' Herbert. 'Mis' Herbert,
after that night they watched together, did get a little better, but
'Mis' Herbert was really very sick, and soon it was pretty sure that
she would have to die. Melanctha certainly did everything, all the
time, that any woman could. Jefferson never thought much better of
Melanctha while she did it. It was not her being good, he wanted to
find in her. He knew very well Jane Harden was right, when she said
Melanctha was always being good to everybody but that that did not
make Melanctha any better for her. Then too, 'Mis' Herbert never
liked Melanctha any better, even on the last day of her living, and so
Jefferson really never thought much of Melanctha's always being good
to her mother.
Jefferson and Melanctha now saw each other, very often. They now
always liked to be with each other, and they always now had a good
time when they talked to one another. They, mostly in their talking to
each other, still just talked about outside things and what they were
thinking. Except just in little moments, and not those very often,
they never said anything about their feeling. Sometimes Melanctha
would tease Jefferson a little just to show she had not forgotten, but
mostly she listened to his talking, for Jefferson still always liked
to talk along about the things he believed in. Melanctha was liking
Jefferson Campbell better every day, and Jefferson was beginning to
know that Melanctha certainly had a good mind, and he was beginning
to feel a little her real sweetness. Not in her being good to 'Mis'
Herbert, that never seemed to Jefferson to mean much in her, but there
was a strong kind of sweetness in Melanctha's nature that Jefferson
began now to feel when he was with her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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