Melanctha Herbert almost always hated her black father, but she loved
very well the power in herself that came through him. And so her
feeling was really closer to her black coarse father, than her feeling
had ever been toward her pale yellow, sweet-appearing mother. The
things she had in her of her mother never made her feel respect.
Melanctha Herbert had not loved herself in childhood. All of her youth
was bitter to remember.
Melanctha had not loved her father and her mother and they had found
it very troublesome to have her.
Melanctha's mother and her father had been regularly married.
Melanctha's father was a big black virile negro. He only came once
in a while to where Melanctha and her mother lived, but always that
pleasant, sweet-appearing, pale yellow woman, mysterious and uncertain
and wandering in her ways, was close in sympathy and thinking to her
big black virile husband.
James Herbert was a common, decent enough, colored workman, brutal and
rough to his one daughter, but then she was a most disturbing child to
manage.
The young Melanctha did not love her father and her mother, and she
had a break neck courage, and a tongue that could be very nasty. Then,
too, Melanctha went to school and was very quick in all the learning,
and she knew very well how to use this knowledge to annoy her parents
who knew nothing.
Melanctha Herbert had always had a break neck courage.
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