A SLAVE'S GRATITUDE!
And now I have to tell, as briefly as may be, of how the Honourable
Roderick St. Amande--as he said he was, and as we all came to believe
he was in very truth--who had come as a bought slave and bond-servant
to our house, became ere long almost one of us, mixing on the same
footing with us and, indeed, living almost the life of a member of my
father's family. To listen to his discourse was, indeed, to be forced
to believe in him, for while he had ceased to insist upon the truth of
his position, as though 'twas no longer necessary, every word he
uttered showed that he must have held that position at home and had,
at least, mixed amongst those with whom he claimed to be on an
equality. He spoke of other lords and ladies with such easy freedom as
no impostor could have assumed who had only known them by sight or
hearsay; he described London and Dublin, and the Courts of both, in a
manner which other Virginians, who were in the habit of paying
frequent visits home, acknowledged was perfectly just and accurate,
and, above all, his easy assumption of familiarity, if not
superiority, to those whom he designated as "colonials" and
"emigrants," impressed everyone. To my father, whose bread he ate in
easy servitude, he behaved with a not disrespectful freedom; Gregory
he treated as a sort of provincial acquaintance; and to Mary Mills and
myself he assumed an easy degree of intercourse which was at once
amusing and galling. And that he was a bought slave who might be
starved or flogged, and possibly killed if his master were cruelly
disposed, he seemed to have entirely forgotten.
Yet--bitter as is the confession, knowing now how this wretch repaid
at last that which was done for him--all of us came to regard him as
an intimate, and, if the truth must be told, to take some amusement in
his society. To my father he could tell many interesting stories,
young as he was, of men moving in the gay world at home, of whom the
former had heard, or with whose forerunners he had been acquainted. To
Gregory he described the hunting of the fox in England and Ireland;
racing which he had seen at Newmarket and on Hampstead Heath and
Southsea Common, new guns that were invented for the chase, and the
improved breeds of harriers that were trained in Wiltshire. To Mary
and myself--shame on us that we loved to hear such things!--he would
tell of the ladies of the Court and their love affairs and
intriguings; of the women of the theatres and their great appetites
and revellings, and of the balls and ridottos and "hops," as he termed
them, which took place. Of books, though he had been at school at
Harrow, he seemed to know nothing, though he had little scraps of
Latin which he would lug into his conversation as suitable to the
subject. Yet to us, to Mary who had never been allowed to go to a
theatre in England, or to me who dwelt in a land where such a thing
had never at this time been heard of, and where an exhibition of a
polar bear, or a lion, or a camel in a barn was a marvel that drew
crowds from miles around, his talk was agreeable.
Unfortunately, however, there was that about him which led us two
women--though I was scarce a woman then--to keep him at his distance.
Being made free of the rum and the sangaree as well as, sometimes, the
imported brandy, and being often with the young gentlemen of other
plantations, whom he soon came to know, he was frequently inebriated,
and, when in this state, was not fit to be encountered. My white
bondmaid, Christian Lamb (who as a girl of fourteen had been sentenced
to death in London for stealing a bottle of sweetmeats, but was
afterwards cast for transportation) was one of the objects of his
passion until her brother, a convict, threatened to have revenge if he
did not desist. Of this brother so strange a thing was related that I
must here repeat it. Going to bid farewell to his sister, Christian,
in the transport at Woolwich, near London, he begged the captain to
take him, too, as a foremast man, but this the other refused, bidding
him brutally to wait but a little while and he would doubtless come
soon "in the proper way," namely, as a convict himself. Enraged, he
went ashore and picked a gentleman's pocket of a handkerchief, when,
sure enough, he came out in the next transport to Virginia, and,
enquiring for his sister, had the extreme good fortune to attract my
father's notice and to be bought by him.
To Mary and to me Mr. St. Amande ever used the language of his class,
as, I suppose, in England, and would exclaim:
"How beautiful you both are. You, Miss Mills, are dark as the Queen of
Night, as the fellow saith in the play, while you Miss Bampfyld are
like unto the lilies of the field. 'Tis well I have not to stay here
long or my heart would be irremediably gone--split in twain, one half
labelled 'Mary,' t'other 'Joice.' Nay, I know not that I do not love
you both now."
"Best keep your love, sir," Mary would reply, "for those who wish it,
as doubtless there are many. 'Tis said you admire many of the
bond-women below; why not offer your love to them as well as your
pretty speeches?"
Whereon he would flush up and reply, "Madam, my love is for my equals.
You forget I am a peer in the future."
"And a slave in the present," she would retort, as it seemed to me
then, cruelly. "Therefore are the bond-women your equals."
His drunkenness angered my father so, that, sometimes, he would order
him out of the great saloon, where he would unconcernedly sprawl
about, soiling our imported Smyrna and Segodia carpets, disarranging
our old English furniture we prized so much, and rumpling the silk
and satin covers on the couches. Then, when ordered forth, he would
often disappear for a day or so, to be heard of next as being at a
cock-fight at some neighbouring hamlet; or in a drinking bout with our
clergyman, a most depraved divine who was only kept in his position
till a more decorous person could be obtained; or herding down with
the bond-servants and negroes till driven away by the overseers.
"In truth," my father would at these times exclaim, "I wish heartily a
letter would come from the Marquis." He had written to him in
preference to Lord St. Amande, reflecting that if, after all, the
fellow was not what he seemed to be, the Marquis must be the man to
set things right, while Lord St. Amande might, in such a case, be an
impostor himself. Yet it grew more and more difficult to suppose this,
since the youth himself had once or twice sent off letters addressed
to "The Right Hon., The Viscount St. Amande," at Grafton Street,
Dublin; to another gentleman addressed as "Wolfe Considine, Esquire,"
and to still another addressed as "Lord Charles Garrett, at The
Castle, Dublin."
"'Tis a plaguey fellow this," he said to us of his lordship one day
with a laugh, as he closed the latter up, "to whom I was engaged, as I
seem to remember, to fight a duel on the morning the ruffians
kidnapped me. A son of the Marquis of Tullamore, and a fire-eater,
because his father had got him a pair of colours in Dunmore's
regiment. He will swear I ran away for fear of him, till he gets this
letter telling him I will meet him directly I set foot in Ireland
again."
"What," said my father one night to me as we sat in the porch, "does
he mean when he mutters something about an impostor who claims his
father's title? I have heard him speak on the subject to you and Miss
Mills, though, since I can not abide the youth, I have paid but little
heed."
"He says," I replied, while my father smoked his great pipe and
listened lazily, "that there is some youth in Ireland who claims to be
the rightful lord, being the son of his uncle, the late Viscount. Yet
he is not his son, he says, being in truth the son of that lord's wife
who lived not with her husband."
"Humph!" exclaimed my father, "then 'tis strange he should be here
sold into bond-service while the other is free at home. 'Tis common
enough for such poor lads as that other to get sent away, but peers'
true sons not often. Perhaps," he went on, "it is this gracious youth
who is the impostor and not that other."
"I know not," I replied, "but from what Mary and I can gather--and he
speaks more freely in his cups than ordinarily--there seems to have
been some plot devised for shipping off that other, but some springe
having been set this one was sent instead. Yet, he says, he cannot
himself comprehend it, since the other was a beggar dwelling with
beggars, while he was amongst the best, so that no confusion should
have arisen."
"Does he say that his father, Lord St. Amande, entered into so foul a
plot as that?"
"Nay, he says the youth was a young criminal cast for transportation
for robbery, but that he escaped from jail and, in the hunt after him,
they secured the wrong one, which he accounts for by both bearing the
same name."
Again my father said "Humph!" and pondered awhile, and then, as he
rose to seek his bed, he continued, "We shall know the truth some day,
may be. The Marquis of Amesbury will surely answer my letter, and,
indeed, if this young tosspot be what he says he is, there should
already be some on their way to Virginia to seek for him. He cannot
have been smuggled off without some talk arising about the affair,
and, even if that should not be so, the letters he has sent by the
couriers to his father should bring forth some response--if his tale
is true."
So the time went on and the period drew near when news might be
expected from Ireland. As it so went on and that intelligence might be
looked for, we grew more and more sure that Mr. St. Amande's story
must be true. For so certain did he seem of the fact that letters
would come from his father--he knowing not that mine had written to
the Marquis of Amesbury--requiring his release and paying, as the
young man was courteous enough to term it, "my father's charges," that
he threw off any restraint he might previously have had, and treated
us all with even greater freedom than before. Yet, as you shall hear,
he went too far.
He would not, however, have gone as far as he did if, at this time, my
father had not fallen into a sickness which obliged him to keep his
bed--alas! it was to bring him to his end!--so that there was none to
control this young man. Gregory, who had his own plantation where he
lived with his widowed mother, and their joint interests to look
after, could not be always at our place, and thus the marvellous thing
came about that Mr. St. Amande, though our bond-servant in actual
fact, did in our house almost what he pleased. He came and went as he
chose, he rode my father's horses, he drank rum morning, noon and
night, and he even brought his degraded friend, the clergyman, into
the house to drink with him under the excuse of that wicked old man
being necessary for my father's spiritual needs. But the latter
ordered that degraded man from the room where he lay sick, and bade
him begone, and, later on, at night, when these two began singing and
bawling in their cups--so that some of the negroes and servants
outside thought the Indians had at last surrounded us!--he staggered
forth from his chamber, and, from the landing, swore he would go down
and shoot them if they did not desist.
But now came the time when all this turmoil and this disgrace to our
house was to cease.
I was passing one night through the saloon, having, indeed, come in
from the porch where I had been advising with Gregory, who had ridden
over to see us, as to what was to be done if my father remained much
longer sick and we still had this dreadful infliction upon our house,
when to my surprise--for I thought him away cockfighting--I saw him
reel into the hall, and, perceiving me, direct his steps into the room
where I was.
"Ha! ha! my pretty Joice!" he exclaimed, as he did so; "ha! ha! my
Virginian beauty. So thou art here! How sweet, too, thou look'st
to-night with thy bare white arms and rosy lips and golden hair.
Faith, Joice! colonist girl though thou art, thou are fit to be
beloved of any," and he hiccoughed loudly.
"If Gregory had not but gone this instant," I exclaimed, "he should
whip you, you ill-mannered dog, for daring to speak to me thus in my
father's own house. Get you to bed, sir, and disturb not the place."
"To bed! Not I! 'Tis not yet ten o' the clock and I am not accustomed
to such hours. Nay, Joice, think on't, my dear. Five months at sea,
kicked and cuffed and starved, and now in the land of plenty--plenty
to eat and drink. And to spend, too! See here, my Joice," and he
pulled out a handful of English guineas from his pocket. "Won 'em all
at the match from that put Pringle, who, colonist though he is, hath
impudently been sent to Oxford and is now back. Won't go to bed,
Joice, for hours," he hiccoughed. "No! Fetch me bottle brandy. We'll
sit up together and I'll tell you how I love you."
"Let me pass, _slave_," I exclaimed in my anger, while he still stood
barring my way. "Let me pass."
"Hoity-toity. Slave, eh? Slave! And for how long, think you, my
pretty? Ships are due in the bay even now, and then I can pay off thy
father and go home. Yet I know not that I will go home. I have
conceived a fancy for Virginia and Virginian girls. Above all for
thee, Joice. I love thy golden head and blue eyes and rosy lips--what
said the actor fellow in the play of old Bess's day, of lips like
roses filled with snow? He must have dreamt of such as thine!--I love
them, I say. And, Joice, I do love thee."
I was trembling with anger all the while he spoke, and now I said:
"While my father lies sick I rule in this house, and to-morrow that
rule shall see you punished. To-morrow you shall go amongst the
convicts and the bond-servants, and do slaves' work. You tipsy dog,
this house is no place for you!"
He took no notice of my words beyond a drunken grin, and then, because
he was a cowardly ruffian who thought he could safely assault a young
girl who was alone and defenceless while her father lay ill upstairs,
he sprang towards me and seized me in his arms exclaiming: "Roses
filled with snow! And I will have a kiss from them. I will, I say, I
will. Thy charms madden me, Joice."
But now, while I struggled with him and beat his face with my clenched
hands, I sent shriek upon shriek forth, and I screamed to my father
and Mary to come and save me from the monster.
"Ssh-ssh!" he said, while still he endeavoured to kiss me. "Hush,
you pretty fool, hush! You will arouse the house, and kisses cost
nothing--ha, the devil!"
He broke off his speech and released me, for now he saw a sight that
struck fear to his craven heart. Standing in the open doorway, his
face as white as the long dressing robe he wore, was my father with
his drawn hanger in his hand, and, behind him, Mary Mills and one or
two negroes.
"God!" he exclaimed, "my daughter assaulted by my own bought servant.
You villain! your life alone can atone for this." Then, with one step,
his strength returning to him for a moment, he came within distance of
the ruffian, and, reaching his sword on high, struck full at his head.
Fortunately for the other, but unfortunately for future events, his
feebleness made that sword shake in his hand so that it missed the
wretch's head--though only by a hair's breadth--and, descending,
struck off one of his ears so that it fell upon the polished floor of
the saloon, while the weapon cut into his shoulder as it continued its
course.
"This time I will make more sure," my father exclaimed, raising the
sword again, but, ere he could renew the attack, with one bound
accompanied by a hideous yell of pain, the villain Roderick St. Amande
had leapt out on to the porch and fled down the steps--his track being
marked by a line of blood. While my poor father, overcome by his
exertions, and seeing that the wretch had escaped, fell back fainting
into the arms of Mary Mills.