SINGLEHANDED.
As my aunt set sail for the shores of Europe, and Miss Pinshon and I
turned our faces towards Magnolia, I seemed to see before me a weary
winter. I was alone now; there was nobody to take my part in small or
great things; my governess would have her way. I was so much stronger
now that no doubt she thought I could bear it. So it was. The full
tale of studies and tasks was laid on me; and it lay on me from
morning till night.
I had expected that. I had looked also for the comfort and refreshment
of ministering to my poor friends in the kitchen on the Sunday
evenings. I began as usual with them. But as the Sundays came round, I
found now and then a gap or two in the circle; and the gaps as time
went on did not fill up; or if they did they were succeeded by other
gaps. My hearers grew fewer, instead of more; the fact was undoubted.
Darry was always on the spot; but the two Jems not always, and Pete
was not sure, and Eliza failed sometimes, and others; and this grew
worse. Moreover, a certain grave and sad air replaced the enjoying,
almost jocund, spirit of gladness which used to welcome me and listen
to the reading and join in the prayers and raise the song. The singing
was not less good than it used to be; but it fell oftener into the
minor key, and then poured along with a steady, powerful volume,
deepening and steadying as it went, which somehow swept over my heart
like a wind from the desert. I could not well tell why, yet I felt it
trouble me; sometimes my heart trembled with the thrill of those sweet
and solemn vibrations. I fancied that Darry's prayer had a somewhat
different atmosphere from the old. Yet when I once or twice asked
Margaret the next morning why such and such a one had not been at the
reading, she gave me a careless answer, that she supposed Mr. Edwards
had found something for them to do.
"But at night, Margaret?" I said. "Mr. Edwards cannot keep them at
work at night."
To which she made no answer; and I was for some reason unwilling to
press the matter. But things went on, not getting better but worse
until I could not bear it. I watched my opportunity and got Maria
alone.
"What is the matter," I asked, "that the people do not come on Sunday
evening as they used? Are they tired of the reading, Maria?"
"I 'spect dey's as tired as a fish mus' be of de water," said Maria.
She had a fine specimen under her hand at the moment, which I suppose
suggested the figure.
"Then why do they not come as usual, Maria? there were only a few last
night."
"Dere was so few, it was lonesome," said Maria.
"Then what is the reason?"
"Dere is more reasons for t'ings, den Maria can make out," she said
thoughtfully. "Mebbe it's to make 'em love de priv'lege mo'."
"But what keeps them away, Maria? what hinders?"
"Chile, de Lord hab His angels, and de debil he hab his ministers; and
dey takes all sorts o' shapes, de angels and de ministers too. I
reckon dere's some work o' dat sort goin' on."
Maria spoke in a sort of sententious wisdom which did not satisfy me
at all. I thought there was something behind.
"Who is doing the work, Maria?" I asked, after a minute.
"Miss Daisy," she said, "dere ain't no happenin' at all widout de Lord
lets it happen. Dere is much contrairy in dis world--fact, dere is;
but I 'spect de Lord make it up to us by'm by."
And she turned her face full upon me with a smile of so much quiet
resting in that truth, that for just a moment it silenced me.
"Miss Daisy ain't looking quite so peart as she use to look," Maria
went on. But I slipped away from that diversion.
"Maria," I said, "you don't tell me what is the matter; and I wish to
know. What keeps the people, Pete, and Eliza, and all, from coming?
What hinders them, Maria? I wish to know."
Maria busied herself with her fish for a minute, turning and washing
it; then, without looking up from her work, she said, in a lowered
tone,--
"'Spect de overseer, he don't hab no favour to such ways and
meetin's."
"But with _me_?" I said; "and with Aunt Gary's leave?"
"'Spose he like to fix t'ings his own way," said Maria.
"Does he forbid them to come?" I asked.
"I reckon he do," she said, with a sigh.
Maria was very even-tempered, quiet, and wise, in her own way. Her
sigh went through my heart. I stood thinking what plan I could take.
"De Lord is berry good, Miss Daisy," she said, cheerily, a moment
after; "and dem dat love Him, dere can be no sort o' separation, no
ways."
"Does Mr. Edwards forbid them _all_ to come?" I asked. "For a good
many do come."
"'Spect he don't like de meetin's, nohow," said Maria.
"But does he tell all the people they must not come?"
"I reckon he make it oncomfor'ble for 'em," Maria answered gravely.
"Dere is no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he ain't no
gentleman, nohow!"
"What does he do, Maria?" I said, trembling, yet unable to keep back
the question.
"He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave
way. "'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder--now massa so fur.
Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' His angel, some time."
Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came
in, and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur"--yes!
I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China, and
it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of
my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart
felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my
room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends,
nor even that their short enjoyment of the word of life was hindered
and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of
_wrong_ done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and
mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to
bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible as
great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves as true as my father's
right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as
well as for me; and here was my father--_my father_--practically
saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had
sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me,
it was the consciousness that the _reason_ of it all was that we might
profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free
to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses
might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept
unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into
our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg
his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation
might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer,
saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and
that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the
laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled
by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as
usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for
that if the slaves were allowed books and knowledge, they would soon
not be content with their condition, and would be banding together to
make themselves free. I knew all this, and I had been brooding over
it; and now when the powerful hand of the overseer came in to hinder
the little bit of good and comfort I was trying to give the people, my
heart was set on fire with a sense of sorrow and wrong that, as I
said, no child ought ever to know.
I think it made me ill. I could not eat. I studied like a machine, and
went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by
myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought
which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never
break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit
of a ripened purpose came to maturity.
I did not give up my Sunday readings, even although the number of my
hearers grew scantier. As many as could, we met together to read and
to pray, yes, and to sing. And I shall never in this world hear such
singing again. One refrain comes back to me now--
"Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
Oh, had I the wings of the morning--
I'd fly to my Jesus away!"
I used to feel so too, as I listened and sometimes sung with them.
Meantime, all that I could do with my quarterly ten dollars, I did.
And there was many a little bit of pleasure I could give; what with a
tulip here and a cup of tea there, and a bright handkerchief, or a
pair of shoes. Few of the people had spirit and cultivation enough to
care for the flowers. But Maria cherished some red and white tulips
and a hyacinth in her kitchen window, as if they had been her
children; and to Darry a white rose-tree I had given him seemed almost
to take the place of a familiar spirit. Even grave Pete, whom I only
saw now and then this winter at my readings, nursed and tended and
watched a bed of crocuses with endless delight and care. All the
while, my Sunday circle of friends grew constantly fewer; and the
songs that were sung at our hindered meetings had a spirit in them,
which seemed to me to speak of a deep-lying fire somewhere in the
hearts of the singers, hidden, but always ready to burst into a blaze.
Was it because the fire was burning in my own heart?
I met one of the two Jems in the pine-avenue one day. He greeted me
with the pleasantest of broad smiles.
"Jem," said I, "why don't you come to the house Sunday evenings any
more?"
"It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large-sized
words, when he could get hold of them.
"Mr. Edwards hinders you?"
"Mass' Ed'ards berry smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done
up all jus' so."
"And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?"
"Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem
said, shaking his own head as if the whole thing were beyond him. I
let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject.
She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular
and mysterious, and looked like a thundercloud. I got nothing from
her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in
my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew,
would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me if they
could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her
love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit
hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From
her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had
been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying
had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy
Theresa said, "'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de
devil."
And papa was away on his voyage to China--away on the high seas, where
no letter could reach him; and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire
in my heart now that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would
burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and
purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had
been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time.
Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled
by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the
cemetery-hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons, and that all who
wished to hear me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet
me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was
constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the
quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I
sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the
place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there
was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and
sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not
all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there,
to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My
governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after
lesson-time she seemed to have something else to take her attention.
She did not walk often with me as the spring drew near; and my Sunday
afternoons were absolutely unquestioned.
One day in March I had gone to my favourite place to get out a
lesson. It was not Sunday afternoon, of course. I was tired with my
day's work, or I was not very strong; for though I had work to do, the
witcheries of nature prevailed with me to put down my book. The scent
of pine-buds and flowers made the air sweet to smell, and the spring
sun made it delicious to feel. The light won its way tenderly among
the trees, touching the white marble tombstones behind me, but resting
with a more gentle ray upon the moss and turf where only little bits
of rough board marked the sleeping-places of our dependants. Just out
of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in its
rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My book hung
in my hand, and the course of Universal History was forgotten, while I
mused and mused over the two sorts of graves that lay around me, the
two races, the diverse fate that attended them, while one blue sky was
over, and one sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing the fire
burned" more fiercely than ever David's had occasion when he wrote
those words, "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked to do
that. But I could do nothing; only pray.
I was very much startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep
coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the
hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My
first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The next minute
I saw through the trees and the iron railings behind me that it was
not the overseer. I knew _his_ wideawake; and this head was crowned
with some sort of a cap. I turned my head again and sat quiet; willing
to be overlooked, if that might be. The steps never slackened. I heard
them coming round the railing--then just at the corner--I looked up to
see the cap lifted, and a smile coming upon features that I knew; but
my own thoughts were so very far away that my visitor had almost
reached my side before I could recollect who it was. I remember I got
up then in a little hurry.
"It is Doctor Sandford!" I exclaimed, as his hand took mine.
"Is it, Daisy?" answered the doctor.
"I think so," I said.
"And I _think_ so," he said, looking at me after the old fashion. "Sit
down, and let me make sure."
"You must sit on the grass, then," I said.
"Not a bad thing, in such a pleasant place," he rejoined, sending his
blue eye all round my prospect. "But it is not so pleasant a place as
White Lake, Daisy."
Such a flood of memories and happy associations came rushing into my
mind at these words--he had not given them time to come in slowly. I
suppose my face showed it, for the doctor looked at me and smiled as
he said, "I see it _is_ Daisy; I think it is certainly Daisy. So you
do not like Magnolia?"
"Yes, I do," I said, wondering where he got that conclusion. "I like
the _place_ very much, if----"
"I should like to have the finishing of that 'if'--if you have no
objection."
"I like the _place_," I repeated. "There are some things about it I do
not like."
"Climate, perhaps?"
"I did not mean the climate. I do not think I meant anything that
belonged to the place itself."
"How do you do?" was the doctor's next question.
"I am very well, sir."
"How do you know it?"
"I suppose I am," I said. "I am not sick. I always say I am well."
"For instance, you are so well that you never get tired?"
"Oh I get tired very often. I always did."
"What sort of things make you tired? Do you take too long drives in
your pony-chaise?"
"I have no pony-chaise now, Dr. Sandford. Loupe was left at Melbourne.
I don't know what became of him."
"Why didn't you bring him along? But any other pony would do, Daisy."
"I don't drive at all, Dr. Sandford. My aunt and governess do not like
to have me drive as I used to do. I wish I could!"
"You would like to use your pony and chaise again?"
"Very much. I know it would rest me."
"And you have a governess, Daisy? That is something you had not at
Melbourne."
"No," I said.
"A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his
hat and leaning back against the iron railing, "if she knows properly
how to set people to play."
"To play!" I echoed. "I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of
play."
"Oh! She approves of work then, does she?"
"She likes work," I answered.
"Keeps you busy?"
"Most of the day, sir."
"The evenings you have to yourself?"
"Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I cannot get through with my
lessons, and they stretch on into the evening."
"How many lessons does this lady think a person of your age and
capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking
out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit
of sweetbriar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning.
"Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And by-the-by when does your
day begin?"
"It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford."
"With breakfast?"
"No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast."
"Please of what?"
"Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics."
"As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?"
By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice
and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced
together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the
forms and voices of mamma and papa, they all came crowding and
flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr.
Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way--
"Sweetbriar is sweet, Daisy,"--putting it to my nose. "I should like
to know how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have
coffee?"
"Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study
in mental philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine."
"It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the
doctor, lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are
very hungry when you come to breakfast?"
"No, not generally," I said.
"How is that? where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people
ought to be sharp otherwise."
"My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they
get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time."
"What time in the day do you walk?"
"In the afternoon, when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately
Miss Pinshon does not walk much."
"So you take the best of the day for philosophy?"
"No, sir, for mathematics."
"Oh! Well, Daisy, _after_ philosophy and mathematics have both had
their turn, what then?--when breakfast is over."
"Oh, they have two or three more turns in the course of the day," I
said. "Astronomy comes after breakfast; then Smith's 'Wealth of
Nations;' then chemistry. Then I have a long history lesson to recite;
then French. After dinner we have natural philosophy, and physical
geography and mathematics; and then we have generally done."
"And then what is left of you goes to walk," said the doctor.
"No, not very often now," I said. "I don't know why--Miss Pinshon has
very much given up walking of late."
"Then what becomes of you?"
"I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came
here."
"With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?"
"My history lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time
enough at home."
"How much of a lesson, for instance?" said the doctor, taking the book
and turning over the leaves.
"I had to make a synopsis of the state of Europe from the third
century to the tenth--synchronising the events and the names."
"In writing?"
"I might write it if I chose, I often do, but I had to give the
synopsis from memory."
"Does it take long to prepare, Daisy?" said the doctor, still turning
over the leaves.
"Pretty long," I said, "when I am stupid. Sometimes I _cannot_ do the
synchronising, my head gets so thick; and I have to take two or three
days for it."
"Don't you get punished for letting your head get thick?"
"Sometimes I do."
"And what is the system of punishment at Magnolia for such deeds?"
"I am kept in the house for the rest of the afternoon sometimes," I
said; "or I have an extra problem in mathematics to get out for the
next morning."
"And _that_ keeps you in, if the governess don't."
"Oh no," I said; "I never can work at it then. I get up earlier the
next morning."
"Do you do nothing for exercise but those walks, which you do not
take?"
"I used to ride last year," I said; "and this year I was stronger, and
Miss Pinshon gave me more studies; and somehow I have not cared to
ride so much. I have felt more like being still."
"You must have grown tremendously wise, Daisy," said the doctor,
looking round at me now with his old pleasant smile. I cannot tell the
pleasure and comfort it was to me to see him; but I think I said
nothing.
"It is near the time now when you always leave Magnolia, is it not?"
"Very near now."
"Would it trouble you to have the time a little anticipated?"
I looked at him, in much doubt what this might mean. The doctor
fumbled in his breast pocket and fetched out a letter.
"Just before your father sailed for China, he sent me this. It was
some time before it reached me; and it was some time longer before I
could act upon it."
He put a letter in my hand, which I, wondering, read. It said, the
letter did, that papa was not at ease about me; that he was not
satisfied with my aunt's report of me, nor with the style of my late
letters; and begged Dr. Sandford would run down to Magnolia at his
earliest convenience and see me, and make inquiry as to my well-being;
and if he found things not satisfactory, as my father feared he might,
and judge that the rule of Miss Pinshon had not been good for me on
the whole, my father desired that Dr. Sandford would take measures to
have me removed to the North and placed in one of the best schools
there to be found; such a one as Mrs. Sandford might recommend. The
letter further desired that Dr. Sandford would keep a regular watch
over my health, and suffer no school training nor anything else to
interfere with it; expressing the writer's confidence that Dr.
Sandford knew better than any one what was good for me.
"So you see, Daisy," the doctor said, when I handed him back the
letter, "your father has constituted me in some sort your guardian
until such time as he comes back."
"I am very glad," I said, smiling.
"Are you? That is kind. I am going to act upon my authority
immediately, and take you away."
"From Magnolia?" I said breathlessly.
"Yes. Wouldn't you like to go and see Melbourne again for a little
while?"
"Melbourne!" said I; and I remember how my cheeks grew warm.
"But--will Miss Pinshon go to Melbourne?"
"No; she will not. Nor anywhere else, Daisy, with my will and
permission, where you go. Will that distress you very much?"
I could not say yes, and I believe I made no answer, my thoughts were
in such a whirl.
"Is Mrs. Sandford in Melbourne--I mean, near Melbourne--now?" I asked
at length.
"No, she is in Washington. But she will be going to the old place
before long. Would you like to go, Daisy?"
I could hardly tell him. I could hardly think. It began to rush over
me, that this parting from Magnolia was likely to be for a longer time
than usual. The river murmured by--the sunlight shone on the groves on
the hillside. Who would look after my poor people?
"You like Magnolia after all?" said the doctor. "I do not wonder, so
far as Magnolia goes, you are sorry to leave it."
"No," I said, "I am not sorry at all to leave Magnolia; I am very
glad. I am only sorry to leave--some friends."
"Friends?" said the doctor.
"Yes."
"How many friends?"
"I don't know," said I. "I think there are a hundred or more."
"Seriously?"
"Oh yes," I said. "They are all on the place here."
"How long will you want, Daisy, to take proper leave of these
friends?"
I had no idea he was in such practical haste; but I found it was so.