"I am really sorry, Ellen, but I can't help it. Georgiette has taken a
dislike to the child, and there is no living in peace with her unless I
sell the child or take it away."
"Oh! Mr. St. Pierre, you would not sell that child when it is your own
flesh and blood?" Le Grange winced under these words.
"No, Ellen, I'll never consent to sell the child, but it won't do for
her to stay here. I've made up my mind to send her North, and have her
educated."
"And then I'll never see my darling any more."
"But, Ellen, that is better than having her here to be knocked around by
Georgiette, and if I die to be sold as a slave. It is the best thing I
can do,--hang old Mrs. Le Fevre's tongue; but I guess it would have come
out some time or the other. I just tell you what I'll do, Ellen. I'll
take the child down to New Orleans, and make out to Georgiette that I am
going to sell her, but instead of that, I'll get a friend of mine who is
going to Pennsylvania to take her with him, and have her boarded there,
and educated. Nobody need know anything about her being colored. I'd
send you both, Ellen, but, to tell you the truth, the plantation is
running down, and the crops are so short this year I can't afford it;
but when times get better, I'll send you up there and tell you where you
can find her."
"Well, Mr. St. Pierre, that is better than having Missus knocking her
around or selling her to one of those old mean nigger traders, and never
having a chance to see my darling no more. But, Mr. St. Pierre, before
you take her away won't you please give me her likeness? Maybe I won't
know her when I see her again."
Le Grange consented, and when he went to the city again he told his wife
he was going to sell the child.
"I am glad of it," said Georgiette. "I would have her mother sold, but
we can't spare her; she is so handy with her needle, and does all the
cutting out on the place."
Le Grange's Plan
"The whole fact is this Joe, I am in an awkward fix. I have got myself
into a scrape, and I want you to help me out of it. You were good at
such things when we were at College, and I want you to try your hand
again."
"Well, what's the difficulty now?"
"Well, it is rather a serious one. I have got a child on my hands, and I
don't know what to do with it."
"Whose child is it?"
"Now, that's just where the difficulty lies. It is the child of one of
my girls, but it looks so much like me, that my wife don't want it on
the place. I am too hard up just now to take the child and her mother,
North, and take care of them there. And to tell you the truth I am too
humane to have the child sold here as a slave. Now in a word do you
think that among your Abolitionist friends in the North you could find
any one who would raise the child and bring it up like a white child."
"I don't know about that St. Pierre. There are a number of our people in
the North, who do two things. They hate slavery and hate negroes. They
feel like the woman who in writing to her husband said, they say (or
don't say) that absence conquers love; for the longer you stay away the
better I love you. But then I know some who, I believe, are really
sincere, and who would do anything to help the colored people. I think I
know two or three families who would be willing to take the child, and
do a good part by her. If you say so, I will write to a friend whom I
have now in mind, and if they will consent I will take the child with me
when I go North, provided I can do it without having it discovered that
she is colored, for it would put me in an awkward fix to have it known
that I took a colored child away with me."
"Oh, never fear," said St. Pierre, slapping his friend on the shoulder.
"The child is whiter than you are, and you know you can pass for white."
True to his promise, Josiah Collins wrote to a Quaker friend, whom he
knew in Pennsylvania, and told him the particulars of the child's
history, and the wishes of her father, and the compensation he would
give. In a few days he received a favorable response in which the friend
told him he was glad to have the privilege of rescuing one of that fated
race from a doom more cruel than the grave; that the compensation was no
object; that they had lost their only child, and hoped that she would in
a measure fill the void in their hearts.
Highly gratified with the kind letter of the friend, Le Grange gave the
child into the charge of Josiah Collins, and putting a check for five
hundred dollars in his hand, parted with them at the [station].
He went back into the country, and told his wife that he had found a
trader, who thought the child so beautiful, and that he had bought her
to raise as a fancy girl, and had given him five hundred dollars for
her. "And here," said he, handing her a set of beautiful pearls, "is my
peace offering."
Georgette's eyes glistened as she entertwined the pearls amid the wealth
of her raven hair, and clasped them upon her beautifully rounded arms.
What mattered it to her if every jewel cost a heart throb, and if the
whole set were bought with the price of blood? They suited her style of
beauty, and she cared not what they cost. Proud, imperious, and selfish,
she knew no law but her own will; no gratification but the enjoyment of
her own desires.
Passing from the boudoir of his wife, he sought the room where Ellen
sat, busily cutting and arranging the clothing for the field hands, and
gazing furtively around he said, "here is Minnie's likeness. I have
managed all right." "Thank Heaven!" said the sad hearted mother, as she
paused to dry her tears, and then resumed her needle. "Anything is
better--than Slavery."