I WUZ a strange thing to come most imegiatly after Cousin John Richard’s
visit, and our almost excited interview with Deacon Henzy—that Thomas J.
should make the dicker he did make, and havin’ made it, to think that
before a very long time had passed over Josiah Allen’s bald head and
mine (it wuz _his_ head that wuz bald, not mine) that we two, Josiah
Allen and me, should be started for where we wuz started for, to come
back we knew not when.
Yes, it happened curius, curius as anything I ever see—that is, as some
folks count curiosity. As for me, I feel that our ways are ordered and
our paths marked out ahead on us.
You know when the country is new, somebody will go ahead through the
forests and “blaze” the trees, so the settlers can foller on the path
and not get lost.
Wall, I always feel that we poor mortals are sot down here in a new
country—and a strange one, God knows—and the wilderness stretches out
round us on every side, and we are likely to get lost, dretful likely.
But there is Somebody who goes ahead on us and marks out our pathway. He
makes marks that His true children can see if they only look sharp
enough, if they put on the specks of Faith and the blinders of
Onworldliness, and look keen. And, above all, reach out their hands
through the shadows, and keep close hold of the hand that guides ’em.
And all along the way, though dark shadows may be hoverin’ nigh, there
is light, and glory, and peace, and pretty soon, bimeby they will come
out into a large place, the fair open ground of Beauty and Desire, into
all that they had hoped and longed for.
But I am a eppisodin’ fearful, and to resoom.
As I say, to the outside observer it seemed queer, queer as a dog, that
after all our talk on the subject (and it seemed as if Providence had
jest been a preparin’ us for what wuz to come), that I myself, Josiah
Allen’s wife, should go with my faithful pardner down South to stay for
we knew not how long.
Wall, the way on’t wuz, our son Thomas Jefferson, who is doin’ a
powerful big bizness, made a dicker with a man from the South for a big
piece of land of hisen, a old plantation that used to be splendid and
prosperous before the war, but wuz now run down. The name of the
place—for as near as I can make out they have a practice of namin’ them
old plantations—wuz Belle Fanchon, a sort of a French name, I wuz told.
Wall, Thomas J., in the way of bizness, had got in his hands a summer
hotel at a fashionable resort, and this man wanted to trade with him. He
hadn’t owned this plantation long—it had come into his hands on a
mortgage.
Wall, Thomas Jefferson was offered good terms, and he made the trade.
And early in the fall Maggie, our son’s wife, got kinder run down (she
had a young child), and comin’ from a sort of a consumptive family on
her father’s side, the doctor ordered her to go South for the winter.
He said, in her state of health (she had been weak as a cat for months)
he wouldn’t like to resk the cold of our Northern winter.
Wall, of course when the doctor said this (Thomas Jefferson jest
worships Maggie anyway) he thought at once of that old plantation of
hisen, for he had made the bargain and took the place, a calculatin’ to
sell it agin or rent it out.
And the upshot of the matter wuz that along the last of October, when
Nater seemed all rigged out in her holiday colors of red and orange to
bid ’em good-bye, our son Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and little Snow,
and the baby boy that had come to ’em a few months before, all set sail
for Belle Fanchon, their plantation in Georgia.
Yes, the old girl (Nater) seemed to be a standin’ up on every hill-top a
wavin’ her gorgeous bandana handkerchief to ’em in good-bye; and her
blue gauze veil that floated from her forwerd looked some as if it had
tears on it, it looked sort o’ dim like and hazy.
Josiah and I went to the depot with ’em, and on our way home Nater
didn’t look very gay and festive to us neither, though she wuz dressed
up in pretty bright colors—no, indeed!
Her gorgeous robes looked very misty and droopin’ to me. I didn’t weep,
I wouldn’t be so simple as that. The tears sort o’ run down my face
some, but I wouldn’t weep—I wouldn’t be so foolish when I knew that they
wuz comin’ home in the spring, God willin’.
But the kisses they had all left on my face seemed to kinder draw me
after ’em. And I felt that quite a number of things might happen between
that time and the time when Nater and I would dress up agin to meet
’em—she in her pale green mantilly, and I in my good old London brown,
and we would both sally out to welcome ’em home.
But I didn’t say much, I jest kep’ calm and demute on the outside, and
got my pardner jest as good a dinner as if my heart wuzn’t a achin’.
I felt that I _had_ to be serene anyway, for Josiah Allen was fearfully
onstrung, and I knew that my influence (and vittles) wuz about the only
things that could string him up agin.
So I biled my potatoes and briled my steak with a almost marble brow,
and got a good, a extra good dinner for him as I say, and the vittles
seemed to comfort him considerable.
Wall, time rolled along, as it has a way of doin’.
Good land! no skein of yarn, no matter how smooth it is, and no matter
how neat the swifts run, nor how fast the winder is—nuthin’ of that kind
can compare with the skein of life hung onto the swifts of time—how fast
they run, how the threads fly, how impossible it is to stop ’em or make
’em go slower, or faster, or anything!
They jest turn, and turn, and turn, and the day’s reel offen the swifts,
and the months and the years.
Why, if you jest stopped still in your tracks and meditated on it, it
would be enough to make you half crazy with the idee—of that noiseless
skein of life that Somebody somewhere is a windin’—Somebody a settin’
back in the shadows out of sight, a payin’ no attention to you if you
try to find out who it is, and why he is a windin’, and how long he
calculates to keep the skein a goin’, and what the yarn is a goin’ to be
used for anyway, and why, and how, and what.
No answer can you get, no matter how hard you may holler, or how out of
breath you may get a tryin’ to run round and find out.
You have got to jest set down and let it go on. And all the time you
know the threads are a runnin’ without stoppin’, and a bein’ wound up by
Somebody—Somebody who is able to hold all the innumerable threads and
not get ’em mixed up any, and knows the meanin’ of every one of ’em,
till bimeby the thread breaks, and the swifts stop.
But I am a eppisodin’. Wall, as I said, time rolled along till they had
been down South most two months, and Thomas Jefferson wrote me that
Maggie seemed a good deal better, and he wuz encouraged by the change in
her.
When all of a sudden on a cold December evenin’ we got a letter from
Maggie. Thomas Jefferson wuz took down sick, and the little girl.
And there wuz Maggie, that little delicate thing, there alone amongst
strangers in a strange land.
And sez she, “Mother, what _shall_ I do?”
That wuz about all she said in the way of complaint or agony. She wuzn’t
one to pile up words, our daughter Maggie wuzn’t. But that wuz enough.
“Mother, what _shall_ I do? what _can_ I do?”
I illustrated the text, as artists say, while I wuz a readin’. I see her
pale and patient face a bendin’ over the cradle of the infant, and
little Snow, and over _my boy_, my Thomas Jefferson, who laid on my
heart in his childhood till his image wuz engraved there for all time,
and for eternity too, _I_ think.
Wall, my mind wuz made up before I read the last words: “Your loving and
sorrowful daughter, Maggie.”
Yes, my mind wuz all made up firm as a rock; and to give Josiah Allen
credit, where credit is due, so wuz hisen—his mind wuz made up too.
He blowed his nose hard, and used his bandana on that, and his two eyes,
and he said, “Them specks of hisen wuz jest a spilin’ his eyes.”
And I took up my gingham apron and wiped my eyes.
My spectacles sort o’ hurt my eyes, or sunthin’, and my first words wuz,
“How soon can we start?”
And Josiah’s first words wuz, “I’ll go and talk it over with Ury. I
guess to-morrow or next day.”
Wall, Ury and Philury moved right in and took charge of things and
helped us off, and in less than a week’s time we wuz on our way down
through the snow-drifts and icickles of the North to the greenness and
bloom of the orange-trees and magnolias. Down from the ice-bound rivers
of the North to the merry, leapin’ rivulets of Belle Fanchon. Down from
the cold peace and calm of our Jonesville farm, down to the beauty and
bloom of our boy’s home in the South land, the sorrow and pathos of his
love-watched sick-bed, and our little Snow’s white-faced gladness.
We got there jest as the sun set. The country through which we had been
a passin’ all day and for some time past wuz a hard and
forbidden-lookin’ country—sand, sand, sand, on every side on us, and
piled up in sand-heaps, and stretched out white and smooth and
dreary-lookin’.
Anon, or mebby oftener, we would go by some places sort o’ sot out with
orange-trees, so I spozed, and some other green trees. And once in a
while we would see a house set back from the highway with a piazza a
runnin’ round it, and mebby two on ’em.
And the children a playin’ round ’em, and the children a wanderin’ along
the railroad-track and hangin’ about the depots wuz more than half on
’em black as a coal.
A contrast, I can tell you, to our own little Jonesvillians, with their
freckled white faces and their tow locks a hangin’ over their forwerds.
The hair of these little boys and girls wuzn’t hair, it wuz wool, and it
curled tight round their black forwerds. And their clothes wuz airy and
unpretentious in the extreme; some on ’em had only jest enough on to
hide their nakedness, and some on ’em hadn’t enough.
[Illustration:
THE COLORED CHILDREN.
]
But our boy’s place wuz beautiful. It looked like a picture of fairy
land, as we see it bathed in the red western light. And though we felt
that we might on closter inspection see some faults in it, we couldn’t
seem to see any then.
It wuz a big house, sort o’ light grey in color, with a piazza a runnin’
clear round it, and up on the next story another piazza jest as big,
reared up and runnin’ all round—a verandy they called it.
And both stories of the piazza wuz almost covered with beautiful
blossomin’ vines, great big sweet roses, and lots of other fragrant
posies that I didn’t know the name of, but liked their looks first rate.
There wuz a little rivulet a runnin’ along at one side of the front
yard, and its pleasant gurglin’ sound seemed dretful sort o’ friendly
and pleasant to us.
The yard—the lawn they called it—wuz awful big. It wuz as big as from
our house over to Deacon Gowdey’s, and acrost over to Submit Danker’ses,
and I don’t know but bigger, and all sorts of gay tropical plants wuz
sot out in bunches on the green grass, and there wuz lots of big
beautiful trees a standin’ alone and in clusters, and a wide path led up
from the gate to the front door, bordered with beautiful trees with
shinin’ leaves, and there in the front door stood our daughter Maggie,
white-faced, and gladder-lookin’ than I ever see her before.
How she did kiss me and her Pa too! She couldn’t seem to tell us enough,
how glad she wuz to see us and to have us there.
And my boy, Thomas Jefferson, cried, he wuz so glad to see us.
He didn’t boohoo right out, but the tears come into his eyes fast—he wuz
very weak yet; and I kissed them tears right offen his cheeks, and his
Pa kissed him too. Thomas Jefferson wuz very weak, he wuz a sick boy.
And I tell you, seein’ him lay there so white and thin put us both in
mind, his Pa and me, what Jonesville and the world would be to us if our
boy had slipped out of it.
We knew it would be like a playhouse with the lights all put out, and
the best performer dumb and silent.
It would be like the world with the sun darkened, and the moon a
refusin’ to give its light. We think enough of Thomas Jefferson—yes,
indeed.
Oh, how glad little Snow wuz to see us! And right here, while I am a
talkin’ about her, I may as well tell sunthin’ about her, for it has got
to be told.
Snow is a beautiful child; she becomes her name well, though she wuzn’t
named for real snow, but for her mother’s sirname. I say it without a
mite of partiality. Some grandparents are so partial to their own
offsprings that it is fairly sickenin’.
But if this child wuz the born granddaughter of the Zar of Russia or a
French surf, I should say jest what I do say, that she is a wonderful
child, both in beauty and demeanor.
She has got big violet blue eyes—not jest the color of her Pa’s, but
jest the expression, soft and bright, and very deep-lookin’. Their gaze
is so deep that no line has ever been found to measure its deepness.
When you meet their calm, direct look you see fur into ’em, and through
’em into another realm than ourn, a more beautiful and peaceful one, and
one more riz up like, and inspired.
I often used to wonder what the child wuz a lookin’ for, her eyes seemed
to be a lookin’ so fur, fur away, and always as if in search of
sunthin’. I didn’t know what it wuz, but I knew it wuzn’t nuthin’ light
and triflin’, from her looks.
Some picture of holiness and beauty, and yet sort o’ grand like, seemed
before her rapt vision. But I couldn’t see what it wuz, nor Josiah, nor
her Pa, nor her Ma.
Her hair is a light golden color, not yeller, nor yet orbun, but the
color of the pure pale shiny gold you sometimes see in the western
heavens when the sky is bright and glowin’.
It looked luminous, as if a light from some other land wuz a shinin’ on
it onbeknown to us, and a lightin’ it up. You know how the sun
sometimes, when it gets where we can’t see it, will shine out onto some
pink and white cloud, and look as if the color wuz almost alive—so her
hair looked round the rose pink and white of her pretty face.
Her little soft mouth seemed always jest on the pint of speakin’ some
wonderful words of heavenly wisdom, the look on it wuz such, made in
jest that way.
Not that she ever give utterance to any remark of national importance or
anything of that kind.
But the expression wuz such you seemed to sort o’ look for it; and I
always knew she had it in her to talk like a minister if she only sot
out to.
And she did, in my opinion, make some very wise remarks, very. Josiah
spoke to me about ’em several times, and said she went ahead of any
minister or politician he ever see in the deepness of her mind.
And I told him he must be very careful and not show that he wuz partial
to her on account of relationship. And I sez:
“Look at me; I never do. I always look at her with perfectly impartial
and onprejudiced eyes, and therefore, therefore, Josiah, I can feel free
to say that there never wuz such a child on earth before, and probable
never will be agin;” and sez I, “if I wuz partial to her at all I
shouldn’t dast to say that.”
“Wall,” sez he, “I dast to say what I am a minter; and I know that for
deep argument and hard horse sense she will go ahead of any man on
earth, no matter where he is or who he is, President, or Bishop, or
anything.”
Josiah Allen has excellent judgment in such things; I feel that he has,
and I knew he wuz simply statin’ the facts of the case.
Ever sence she wuz a very young infant, little Snow has made a practice
of settin’ for hours and hours at a time a talkin’ to somebody that
wuzn’t there; or, to state the truth plainer and truthfuller, somebody
that we couldn’t see.
And she would smile up at ’em and seem to enjoy their company first rate
before she could talk even, and when she begun to talk she would talk to
’em.
And I used to wonder if there wuz angels encamped round about her and
neighborin’ with her; and I thought to myself I shouldn’t wonder a mite
if there wuz.
Why, when she wuzn’t more than several months old she would jest lay in
her little crib, with her short golden hair makin’ a sort of a halo
round her white forwerd, and them wonderful heavenly eyes of hern
lookin’ up, up—fur off—fur off—and a smilin’ at somebody or other, and a
reachin’ out her little hands to somebody, a wavin’ ’em a greetin’ or a
good-bye.
Curius! Who it wuz I’d gin a dollar bill any time, and more too, to have
ketched a glimpse of the Form she see, and hearn the whispers or the
music that fell on her ears, too fine and pure for our more earthly
senses.
And most probable I never wuz any madder in my hull life than I wuz when
old Dr. Cork, who wuz doctorin’ her Ma at that time, told me “It wuz
wind.”
Wind! That is jest as much as he knew. But he wuz an old man, and I
never laid it up aginst him, and I never said a word back, only jest
this little triflin’ remark. I sez, sez I:
“The divine breath of Eden blowin’ down into pure souls below, inspirin’
’em and makin’ ’em talk with tongues and see visions and dream dreams,
has always been called ‘wind’ in the past, and I spoze it will be in the
future, by fools.”
This little remark wuz everything that I said, and for all the world he
looked and acted real meachin’, and meached off with his saddle-bags.
But now little Snow’s golden hair wuz a shinin’ out from the piller of
sickness, the big prophetic eyes wuz shot up, and the forwerd wuz pale
and wan.
But when she heard my voice she opened her eyes and tried to lift up her
little snowflake of a hand—a little pretty gesture of greetin’ she
always had—and her smile wuz sweet with all the sweetness of the love
she had for me.
[Illustration:
OLD DR. CORK.
]
And she sez, as I took her into my arms gently and kissed her poor
little pale face time and agin, she sez:
“My own Grandma!” Now jest see the deepness and pure wisdom of that
remark!
Now, fools might say that because I wuz her father’s stepmother that I
wuzn’t her own Grandmother.
But she see further down; she see into the eternal truth of things. She
knew that by all the divine rights of a pure unselfish love and the
kinship of congenial souls, that her Pa wuz my own boy, and she wuz my
own, heart of my heart, soul of my soul.
Yes, there it wuz, jest as she had always done, goin’ right down into
any deep subject or conundrum and gettin’ the right answer to it
imegiatly and to once.
Curius, hain’t it? and she not more’n four and a half—exceedingly curius
and beautiful.
And as I bent there over her, she put up her little thin hand to my
cheek and touched it with a soft caress, then brushed my hair back with
the lily soft fingers, and then touched my cheek agin lightly but
lovingly.
It wuz as good as a kiss, or several of ’em, I don’t know which I would
ruther have, if I had been told to chuse between ’em at the pint of the
bayonet—some kisses, or these caressin’ little fingers on my face.
They wuz both sweet as sweet could be, and tender and lovin’. And she
wuz “my own sweet little baby,” as I told her morn’n a dozen times.
I loved her and she loved me; and when you have said that you have said
a good deal; you have said about all there is to say.
And I felt that I wuz glad enough that I could take holt and help take
care on her, and win her back to health and strength agin, if it lay in
human power.
There wuz a tall, handsome girl in the room when I went in, and I
spozed, from her ladylike mean, that she wuz one of the neighbors, and
she wuz there a neighborin’ with my daughter Maggie, for she seemed to
be a doin’ everything she could to help.
And I spozed, and kep’ on a spozin’ for more than a hour, that she wuz a
neighborin’, till after she went out of the room for a few minutes,
Maggie said she wuz a young colored girl, a “quadroon” she called her,
that she had hired to help take care of Snow.
Sez I in deep amaze:
“That girl colored?”
“Yes,” sez Maggie.
“Wall,” sez I, “she is handsomer than any girl I ever sot eyes on that
wuz oncolored.”
“Yes,” sez Maggie, “Genny is a beautiful girl, and jest as good as she
is pretty.”
“Wall,” sez I, “that is sayin’ a good deal.”
Maggie told me her name was Genieve, but they called her Genny.
Wall, my daughter Maggie had spells all that evenin’ and the next day of
comin’ and puttin’ her arms round me, and sort o’ leanin’ up aginst me,
as if she wuz so glad to lean up aginst sunthin’ that wouldn’t break
down under her head. I see she had been dretful skairt and nervous about
Thomas Jefferson and Snow, and I don’t blame her, for they wuz very sick
children, very. And there she (in her own enjoyment of poor health too)
had had all the care and responsibility on her own self.
But I tell you she seemed real contented when her head sort o’ rested
and lay up aginst my shoulder, or breast-bone, or arm, or wherever it
happened to lay.
And she sez, and kep’ a sayin’, with a voice that come from her heart, I
knew:
“Oh, Mother! how glad, how thankful I am you have come!”
And Thomas Jefferson felt jest so, only more so. He would reach out his
weak white hand towards me, and I would take it in both of my warm
strong ones, and then he would shet up his eyes and look real peaceful,
as if he wuz safe and could rest.
And he sez more than once, “Mother, I am goin’ to get well now you have
come.”
And I sez, cheerful and chirk as could be, “Of course you be.”
I’d say it, happy actin’ as could be on the outside, but on the inside
my heart kep’ a sinkin’ several inches, for he looked dretful sick,
dretful.
Maggie, the weak one when they left Jonesville, wuz the strongest one
now except the young babe, that wuz flourishin’ and as rosy as the roses
that grew round the balcony where he used to lay in his little crib
durin’ the hot days.
As soon as I got rested enough I took sights of comfort a walkin’ round
the grounds and a smellin’ the sweet breath of the posies on every side
of me.
And watchin’ the gay birds a flutterin’ back and forth like big livin’
blossoms on wing.
And a listenin’ to the song of the little rivulet as it wound its way
round amongst the pretty shrubs and flowers, as if it wuz loath to leave
so beautiful a place.
Yes, I see that our son Thomas Jefferson had done well to make the
dicker he had made and get this place for his own.
There wuz several little hills or rises of ground on the lawn, and you
could see from them the roofs and chimneys of two little villages a
layin’ on each side of Belle Fanchon, and back of the house some
distance riz up a low mountain, with trees a growin’ up clear to the
top. It wuz over that mountain that we used to see the sun come up (when
we _did_ see it; there wuzn’t many of us that see that act of hisen, but
it paid us when we did—paid us well).
First, there would be a faint pink tinge behind the tall green branches
of the trees, then golden rays would shoot up like a flight of gold
arrows out over the tree-tops, and then pink and yellow and pinkish
white big fleecy clouds of light would roll up and tinge the hull east,
and then the sun would slowly come in sight, and the world would be lit
up agin.
Down the western side of Belle Fanchon stretched the fair country for a
long ways—trees and green fields, and anon, or oftener, a handsome
house, and fur off the silvery glimpse of a river, where I spoze our
little rivulet wuz a hurryin’ away to jine in with it and journey to the
sea.
Yes, it wuz a fair seen, a fair seen. I never see a prettier place than
Belle Fanchon, and don’t expect to agin.
The way it come to be named Belle Fanchon wuz as follows—Maggie told me
about it the very next day after I arrived and got there:
She said the man that used to own it had one little girl, the very apple
of his eye, who wuz killed by poison give to her by a slave woman, out
of revenge for her own child bein’ sold away from her. But it wuz done
by the overseer; her Pa wuz innocent as a babe, but his heart was broke
all the same.
[Illustration:
THE SLAVE WOMAN WHO POISONED THE CHILD.
]
The little girl’s name wuz Fannie—named after the girlish wife he lost
at her birth. And he bein’ a foreigner, so they say, he called her all
sorts of pretty names in different languages, but most of all he called
her Belle Fanchon.
And when the little girl died in this terrible way, though he had a
housefull of boys—her half brothers—yet they said her Pa’s head wuz
always bowed in grief after that. He jest shet himself up in the big old
house, or wandered through the shadowy gardens, a dreamin’ of the little
one he had loved and lost.
And he give her name to the place, and clung to it as long as he stayed
there for her sake.
It is a kind of a pretty name, I thought when I first heard it, and I
think so still.
The little girl lay buried on a low hill at one side of the grounds,
amongst some evergreens, and tall rose bushes clasping round the little
white cross over her pretty head, and the rivulet made a bend here and
lay round one side of the hill where the little grave wuz, like a
livin’, lovin’ arm claspin’ it round to keep it safe. And its song wuz
dretful low and sweet and sort o’ sad too, as it swept along here
through the green shadows and then out into the sunshine agin.
It wuz a place where the little girl used to play and think a sight of,
so they said. And it wuz spozed that her Pa meant to be laid by her
side.
But the fortunes of war swept him out of the beautiful old place and his
shadowy, peaceful garden, him and his boys too, and they fill soldiers’
graves in the places where the fortune of war took ’em, and her Pa
couldn’t get back to his little girl. And Belle Fanchon slept on alone
under the whisperin’ pines—slept on in sunlight and moonlight, in peace
and war.
Sleepin’ jest as sweet at one time as the other—when the roar of cannon
swept along through the pines that wuz above her, as when the birds’
song made music in their rustlin’ tops.
And jest as calm and onafraid as if her kindred lay by her side.
Though it seemed kinder pitiful to me, when I looked at the small white
headstone and thought how the darlin’ of the household, who had been so
tenderly loved and protected, should lay there all alone under dark
skies and tempests.
Nobody nigh her, poor little thing! and an alien people ownin’ the very
land where her grave wuz made.
Poor little creeter! But that is how the place come to be named.
Snow loved to play there in that corner when she wuz well; she seemed to
like it as well as the little one that used to play there.
As for Boy, he wuz too young to know what he did want or what he didn’t.
He used to spend a good deal of his time a layin’ in his little cradle
out in the veranda, and Genieve used to set there by him when she wuzn’t
needed in the sick-rooms.
And I declare for it if it wuzn’t a picture worth lookin’ at, after
comin’, as I had, from the bareness and icy whiteness of a Jonesville
winter and the prim humblyness of most of the Jonesville females,
especially when they wuz arrayed in their woollen shawls and grey hoods
and mittens. To be jest transplanted from scenes like them, and such
females a shinin’ out from a background of icickles and bare apple-trees
and snow-drifts.
And then to shet your eyes in Jonesville, as it were, and open ’em on a
balcony all wreathed round with clamberin’ roses, and set up aginst a
background of orange-trees hangin’ full of oranges and orange blossoms
too, and in front of that balcony to see a little white crib with some
soft lace over the top, and a perfectly beautiful male child a layin’ on
it, and by the side of him a girl with a slender figure as graceful as
any of the tall white flowers that wuz a swayin’ and bendin’ beneath the
balmy South wind, under the warm blue sky.
A face of a fair oval, with full, sweet lips, and an expression heavenly
sweet and yet sort o’ sad in it, and in the big dark eyes.
They wuz as beautiful eyes as I ever had seen, and I have seen some
dretful pretty eyes in my time, but none more beautiful than these.
And there wuz a look into ’em as if she had been a studyin’ on things
for some time that wuz sort o’ pitiful and kind o’ strange.
As if she had been a tryin’ to get the answer to some momentous question
and deep conundrum, and hadn’t got it yet, and didn’t seem to know when
she would get it.
Dretful sad eyes, and yet sort o’ prophetic and hopeful eyes too, once
in a while.
Them eyes fairly drawed my attention offen the young babe, and I found
that I wuz, in spite of myself, a payin’ more attention to the nurse
than I did to the child, though he is a beautiful boy, beautiful and
very forward.
Wall, I entered into conversation with Genieve, and I found that she had
lived in that neighborhood ever sence she wuz a small child, her mother
havin’ owned a small place not fur from Belle Fanchon.
Her mother had gone out nursin’ the sick, and Genieve had learnt the
trade of her; and then she had, poor child, plenty of time to practice
it in her own home, for her mother wuz sick a long time, and sence her
death Genieve had gone out to take care of little children and sick
people, and she still lived on at the little cottage where her mother
died, an old colored woman and her boy livin’ with her.
There wuz a few acres of land round the cottage that had fruit trees and
berry bushes and vines on it, and a good garden. And the sale of the
fruit and berries and Genieve’s earnin’s give ’em all a good livin’.
Old Mammy and Cato the boy took care of the garden, with an occasional
day’s work hired, when horses wuz required.
The fruit and vegetables Cato carried to a neighborin’ plantation, where
they wuz carried away to market with the farmer’s own big loads.
And there Genieve had lived, and lived still, a goin’ out deeply
respected, and at seventy-five cents to a dollar a day.
I felt dretfully interested in her from the very first; and though it is
hitchin’ several wagons before the horses’ heads, I may as well tell
sunthin’ of her mother’s history now as to keep it along till bimeby. As
long as it has got to be told I may as well tell it now as any time, as
fur as I know.
Maggie told it to me, and it wuz told to her by a woman that knew what
she wuz a sayin’.
Genieve’s mother wuz a very beautiful quadroon who had been brought up
well by an indulgent and good-natured mistress, and a religious one too.
There are as good wimmen in the South as in the North, and men too. She
had educated Madeline and made a sort of a companion of her. She wuz
rich, she could do as she wuz a mind to; and bein’ a widder, she had no
one to say to her “Why do ye do so?”
So she had brought up Madeline as a sort of a pet, and thought her eyes
of her.
Wall, this mistress had some rich and high-born French relatives, and
one of ’em—a young man—come over here on a visit, and fell in love the
first thing with Madeline, the beautiful quadroon companion of his aunt.
And she loved him so well that in the end her love wuz stronger than the
principles of religion that the old lady had instilled into her, for she
ran away with this Monseur De Chasseny, and, forgettin’ its wickedness,
they lived an ideally happy life for years in a shootin’ lodge of hisen
in the heart of a fragrant pine forest in South Carolina. They lived
this happy life till his father found him, and by means of family pride,
and ambition, and the love of keepin’ his own word and his father’s
pledges, he got him to leave his idyllic life and go back to the duties
of his rank and his family in the old country.
[Illustration:
MADELINE
]
He had pledged his word to marry a rich heiress, and great trouble to
both sides of their noble families wuz goin’ to take place and ensue if
he did not go, and his own family wuz goin’ to be disgraced and
dishonored if he did not keep his word.
Wall, men are often led to do things that at first they shrink from in
mortal horror—yes, and wimmen are too.
De Chasseny vowed that he would not leave the woman he loved and the
little girl they both worshipped, not for any reason—not for father, nor
pride, nor for honor.
But he did. He left her, with plenty of money though, as it wuz spozed,
and a broken heart, a ruined life, and a hoard of bitter-sweet and
agonizin’ memories to haunt her for the rest of her days.
She wuz a lovin’-hearted woman bound up in the man she loved—the man she
had forsaken honor and peace of mind for.
There wuz no marriage—there could be none between a white man and a
woman with any colored blood in her veins.
So in the eyes of the world and the law he wuz not guilty when he left
her and married a pure young girl.
Whether he wuz found guilty at that other bar where the naked souls of
men and wimmen stand to be judged, I don’t spoze his rich and titled
friends ever thought to ask themselves.
Anyway, he left Madeline and little Genieve—for so he had named the
child after an old friend of his—he left them and sailed off for France
and the new life to be lived out in the eyes of the world, where
Happiness and gratified Ambition seemed to carry the torches to light
him on his way.
Whether there wuz any other attendants who waited on him, a holdin’ up
dim-burnin’ lamps to light him as he walked down Memory’s aisles, I
don’t know, but I should dare presume to say there wuz.
I should presume to say that in the still night hours, when the palace
lights burned low and the garlands and the feast robes put away for a
spell, and his fair young wife wuz sleepin’ peacefully at his side—I
should presume to say that these black-robed attendants, that are used
to lightin’ folks down dark pathways, led him back to love—first, true,
sweet love—and Madeline, and that under their cold, onsympathizin’ eyes
he stayed there for some time.
As for Madeline, she wuz stunned and almost senseless by the blow, and
wuz for a long time. Then she had a long sickness, and when she come to
herself she seemed to be ponderin’ some deep thought all to herself.
The nurse who was watchin’ with her testified that she dropped to sleep
one mornin’ before daylight, and when she woke up her patient wuz gone,
and the child.
She had some money that her old mistress had give her from time to time,
and that she had never had to use; that wuz taken, with some valuable
jewelry too that that kind old friend had give her—for she had loved to
set off her favorite’s dark beauty with the light of precious stones—all
these wuz taken; but every article that Monseur De Chasseny had give her
wuz left. And all the money that he left for her not a penny wuz ever
called for. She disappeared as if she had never been; lawyers and
detectives, hired, it wuz spozed, by De Chasseny, could find no trace of
her.
There wuz a good, fatherly old missionary in the little settlement near
by who might perhaps have given some information if he had wanted to;
but they never thought of askin’ him, and they would have been no wiser
if they had, most probable.
But about this time a woman in deep mournin’, with a beautiful young
child, come to the little hamlet near Belle Fanchon.
She said she wuz a colored woman, though no one would have believed it.
The good priest in charge of the Mission—Father Gasperin—he seemed to
know sunthin’ about her; he had a brother who wuz a priest in South
Carolina. He got her employment as a nurse after her health improved a
little.
She bought a little cottage and lived greatly respected by all classes,
black and white, and nursed ’em both to the best of her abilities—some
for nuthin’ and some at about a dollar a day.
But her earnest sympathies, her heartfelt affection wuz with the black
race. She worked for their good and advancement in every way with a zeal
that looked almost as if she wuz tryin’ to atone for some awful mistake
in the past—as if she wuz tryin’ to earn forgiveness for forsakin’ her
mother’s race for the white people, who wuz always faithless to her
race, only when selfishness guided them—who would take the service of
their whole life and strength, as if it belonged to ’em; who would take
them up as a plaything to divert an hour’s leisure, and then throw the
worthless thing down agin.
Her whole heart wuz bent upon the good of her mother’s people. She
worked constantly for their advancement and regeneration. She bore their
intolerable burdens for ’em, she agonized under their unexampled wrongs.
She exhorted ’em to become Christians, to study, to learn to guide
themselves aright; she besought ’em to elevate themselves by all means
in their power.
She became a very earnest Christian; she went about doin’ good; she
studied her Bible much. The Book that in her bright days of happiness
she had slighted became to her now the lamp of her life.
Most of all did this heart-broken soul, who had bid good-bye to all
earthly happiness, love the weird prophecies of St. John the Evangelist.
She loved to read of the Belovéd City, and the sights that he saw, to
her become realities. She said she saw visions in the night as she
looked up from dyin’ faces into the high heavens—she foretold events.
Her prophetic sayin’s became almost as inspired revelations to them
about her.
She said she heard voices talkin’ to her out of the skies and the
darkness, and I don’t know but she did—I don’t feel like disputin’ it
either way; besides, I wuzn’t there.
But as I wuz a sayin’, from what I wuz told, the little girl, Genieve,
inheritin’ as she did her mother’s imaginative nature and her father’s
bright mind and wit, and contemplatin’ her mother’s daily life of duty
and self-sacrifice, and bein’ brought up as she wuz under the very eaves
of the New Jerusalem her mother wuz always readin’ about, it is no
wonder that she grew up like a posy—that while its roots are in the
earth its tall flowers open and wave in the air of Eden.
The other world, the land unseen but near, became more of a reality to
her than this. “The voices” her mother said she heard was to her real
and true as the voice of good Father Gasperin, who preached in the
little chapel every month.
The future of her mother’s race wuz to her plain and distinct, lit with
light fallin’ from the new heavens on the new earth that she felt
awaited her people.
The inspired prophecies to her pointed to their redemption and the
upbuilding of a New Republic, where this warm-hearted, emotional, beauty
lovin’ race should come to their own, and, civilized and enlightened,
become a great people, a nation truly brought out of great tribulations.
She grew up unlike any other girl, more beautiful than any other—so said
every one who saw her. A mind different from any other—impractical
perhaps, but prophetic, impassioned, delicate, sorrowful, inspired.
When she became old enough she followed her mother’s callin’ of nursin’
the sick, and it seemed indeed as if her slight hands held the gift of
healin’ in them, so successful wuz she.
Guarded by her mother as daintily as if she wuz the daughter of a queen,
she grew up to womanhood as innocent as Eve wuz when the garden wuz new.
She turned away almost in disgust from the attention of young men, white
or colored.
But about a year before I went to Belle Fanchon she had met her king.
And to her, truly, Victor wuz a crowned monarch. And the love that
sprung up in both their hearts the moment they looked in each other’s
eyes wuz as high and pure and ideal an attachment as wuz ever felt by
man or woman.
Victor wuz the son of a white man and a colored woman, but he showed the
trace of his mother’s ancestry as little as did Genieve.
His mother wuz a handsome mulatto woman, the nurse and constant
attendant of the wife of Col. Seybert, whose handsome place, Seybert
Court, could jest be seen from the veranda of Belle Fanchon.
Col. Seybert owned this plantation, but he had been abroad with his
family many years, and in the States further South, where he also owned
property.
He had come back to Seybert Court only a few months before Thomas J.
bought Belle Fanchon.
Mrs. Seybert wuz a good woman, and in a long illness she had soon after
her marriage she had been nursed so faithfully by Phyllis, Victor’s
mother, that she had become greatly attached to her; and Phyllis and her
only child, Victor, had attended the Colonel and his wife in all their
wanderings. Indeed, Mrs. Seybert often said and felt, Heaven knows, that
she could not live if Phyllis left her.
And Victor wuz his mother’s idol, and to be near her and give her
comfort wuz one of the reasons why he endured his hard life with Col.
Seybert.
For his master wuz not a good man. He wuz hard, haughty, implacable. He
wuz attached to Victor much as a manufacturer would be to an extra good
piece of machinery by which his gains wuz enhanced.
Victor wuz an exceptionally good servant; he watched over his employer’s
interests, he wuz honest amongst a retinue of dishonest ones. He saved
his employer’s money when many of his feller-servants seemed to love to
throw it away. His keen intelligence and native loyalty and honesty
found many ways of advancin’ his master’s interests, and he helped him
in so many ways that Col. Seybert had come to consider his services
invaluable to him.
Still, and perhaps he thought it wuz the best way to make Victor feel
his place and not consider himself of more consequence than he wuz—and
it wuzn’t in the nater of Col. Seybert to be anything but mean, mean as
pusley, and meaner—
Anyway, he treated Victor with extreme insolence, and cruelty, and
brutality. Mebby he thought that if he didn’t “hold the lines tight,” as
he called it, Victor might make disagreeable demands upon his purse, or
his time, or in some way seek for a just recognition of his services.
Col. Seybert, too, drank heavily, which might perhaps be some excuse for
his brutality, but made it no easier for Victor to endure.
At such times Col. Seybert wuz wont to address Victor as “his noble
brother,” and order his “noble brother” to take off his boots, or put
them on, or carry him upstairs, or perform still more menial services
for him, he swearin’ at him roundly all the time, and mixin’ his oaths
with whatever vile and contemptible epithets he could think of—and he
could think of a good many.
And perhaps it did not make it easier for Victor to obey him that he
told the truth in his drunken babble. Victor wuz his brother, and they
two wuz the only descendants of the gallant old Gen. Seybert, the
handsomest, the wittiest, the bravest and the most courtly man of his
day.
He went down to the grave the owner of many hundred slaves, the husband
of a fair young bride, and the father of two children, one the only son
of his pretty Northern bride, the other the son of his mother’s maid.
And what made matters still more complicated and hard to understand, to
this unowned, despised son had descended all the bright wit and
philosophical mind, and suave, gentle, courteous manners of this fine
gentleman Gen. Seybert; and to the son and legal heir of all his wealth,
not a bit of his father’s sense, bright mind, and good manners.
One of his maternal great-uncles had been a rich, new-made man of low
tastes and swaggerin’, aggressive manners. It wuz a sad thing that these
inherited traits and tastes should just bound over one gentlemanly
generation and swoop down upon the downy, lace-festooned cradle of this
only son and heir—but they did.
All the nobility of mind, the grace, the kindly consideration for
others, and the manly beauty, all fell as a dower to the little lonely
baby smuggled away like an accursed thing, in his maternal grandmother’s
little whitewashed cabin.
To the young heir, Reginald, fell some hundreds of thousands of dollars,
two or three plantations, and an honored name and place in society, the
tastes of a pot-boy, the mind and habits of a clown, the swaggerin’,
boastin’ cruelty of an American Nero.
Col. Seybert drove and swore, and threatened his negroes as his
great-uncle Wiggins drove the white operatives in his big Northern
factory, kept them at starvation wages, and piled up his money-bags over
the prostrate forms of gaunt, overworked men and women, and old young
children, who earned his money out of their own hopeless youth; with one
hand dropped gold into his coffers, and with the other dug shallow
graves that they filled too soon.
Northern cupidity and avarice, Southern avarice and cupidity, equally
ugly in God’s sight, so we believe.
It wuz indeed strange that to Reginald should descend all the
great-uncle’s traits and none of his father’s, only the passionate
impulses that marred an otherwise almost faultless character; and to
Victor, the cast-off, ignored son, should descend all the courtly graces
inherited from a long line of illustrious ancestors, and all the
brilliant qualities of mind too that made old Gen. Seybert’s name
respected and admired wherever known.
His sin in regard to Victor’s mother wuz a sin directly traceable to the
influence of Slavery. As the deeds a man commits when in liquor can be
followed back to that source, so could this cryin’ sin be traced
directly back to the Slave regime.
It wuz but one berry off of the poisonous Upas-tree of Slavery that
gloomily shadowed the beautiful South land, and darkens it yet, Heaven
knows.
The top of this tree may have been lowered a little by the burnin’ fires
of war, but the deep roots remain; and as time and a false sense of
security relaxes the watch kept over it, the poison shoots spring up and
the land is plagued by its thorny branches, its impassable, thick
undergrowth.
The tree may be felled to the earth before it springs up agin with a
more dangerous, vigorous growth and destroys the hull nation.
So Cousin John Richard said; but I don’t know whether it will or not,
and Josiah don’t.
But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom and continue on.
Reginald Seybert wuz tolerably good-lookin’ in an aggressive, florid
style, and he had plenty of boldness and wealth. And some, or all of
these qualities, made it possible for him to marry a good woman of an
impoverished but aristocratic Southern family.
The marriage wuz a sudden one—he did not give the young lady time to
change her mind. He met her at a fashionable watering-place where they
wuz both strangers, and, as I said, he give her no time to repent her
choice.
After the honeymoon trip and her husband brought her to his home, she
heard many strange things she had been kept in ignorance of—amongst them
this pitiful story of Victor and his mother—and being what she wuz, a
good, tender-hearted woman, with high ideals and pure and charitable
impulses—perhaps it wuz this that made her so good to Victor’s mother,
so thoughtful and considerate of him, and that made her, during her
husband’s long absences on his wild sprees, give him every benefit of
teachers and opportunity to study.
And Victor almost worshipped his gentle mistress, his unhappy mistress,
for it could not be otherwise, that after she knew him well, her
feelin’s for her husband could hardly have been stronger than pity.
Perhaps after a time aversion and disgust crept in, and as she had no
children or brothers of her own, she grew strongly attached to Phyllis
and to Victor, the only relative—for so this strange woman called him in
her thoughts—the only relative near her who wuz kind to her.
For as her beauty faded, worn away by the anguished, feverish beatings
of a sad heart, Col. Seybert grew cruel and brutal to her also. It was
not in his nature to be kind to anything, or to value anything that did
not minister to his selfishness. He lived only for the gratification of
his appetites and his ambition.
He prized Victor, as we said, as a manufacturer would prize an extra
good loom, on which valuable cloth might be woven, and which would bear
any amount of extra pressure on occasion.
Victor’s loyal affection and gratitude to his mistress, and his
determination to shield her all he could from her husband’s brutality,
and his love for his mother, made him conceal from them all he could the
fiendish cruelties his master sometimes inflicted upon him.
Old Gen. Seybert had been noted all his brilliant life for his tender
consideration and thoughtful courtesy towards women, and his desire to
shield them from all possible annoyance.
His son Victor had this trait also, added to the warm-hearted gratitude
of his mother’s race towards one who befriends them.
[Illustration:
COLONEL SEYBERT.
]
Many a time did he carry a scarred back and a smilin’ face into the
presence of his mother and mistress.
Many a time did he voluntarily absent himself from them for days, or
until the bruises had healed that some too skilfully aimed missile had
inflicted upon him.
But soon after he came to Belle Fanchon, and after he had met and loved
Genieve, Col. Seybert’s treatment became so unendurable that Victor
begged of his mother to go away with him, tellin’ her he could now earn
a good livin’ for her; and he had dreams, hardly formulated to himself
then, of the future of his mother’s race. They lay in his heart as seeds
lie in the dark ground, waitin’ for the time to spring up—they were
germinatin’, waitin’ for the dawn to waken them to rich luxuriance.
But his mother felt that she could not leave her kind mistress in her
lonely troubles, and she entreated him prayerfully that he would not
leave her, “and she could not go away and leave Miss Alice with that
tyrant and murderer”—for so she called Col. Seybert in her wrath.
And his mistress’s anguished entreaties that he would not leave her, for
she felt that she had but a little time to live, her health was failin’
all the time—
“And the blessed lamb would die without us anyway,” his mother would say
to Victor—
And all these arguments added to his loyal desire to befriend this
gentle mistress who had educated him and done for him all she could have
done for son or brother—all these arguments caused him to stay on.
But after comin’ to Seybert Court, Victor had given Col. Seybert another
opportunity to empty the vials of his wrath upon him.
Victor had a bosom friend, a young man in about the same circumstances
that he wuz—only this friend, Felix Ward, had lived with a kind master
and mistress durin’ his childhood and early youth.
His father and mother wuz both dead; his father bein’ killed in the war,
and his mother soon followin’ him.
He wuz an intelligent negro, with no white blood in his veins, so far as
he knew. Felix, for so he had been named when he looked like a tiny
black doll, by his young mistress, to whom the world looked so happy and
prosperous that everything assumed a roseate hue to her.
Her faithful servant, his mother, brought the little image in ebony to
her room to show it to her, jest after she had read the letter from the
man she loved askin’ her to be his wife.
She wuz happy; the world looked bright and prosperous to her. She gave
the little pickaninny this name for a good omen—Felix: happy,
prosperous.
But alas! though the pretty young mistress prospered well in her love
and her life while it lasted, the poor little baby she had named had
better have been called Infelix, so infelicitous had been his life—or,
that is, the latter part of it.
For awhile, while he wuz quite young, it seemed as if his name would
stand him in good stead and bring good fortune with it. For being owned
till her death by this same gentle young mistress and her husband, both,
like so many Southerners, so much better than the system they
represented, they helped him, seein’ his brightness and intelligence, to
an education, and afterwards through their influence he wuz placed at
Hampton School, and at their death, which occurred very suddenly in a
scourge of yeller fever, they left him a little money.
At Hampton School he got a good education, and learned the carpenter’s
trade. And it wuz at Seybert Court, which wuz bein’ repaired, and he wuz
one of the workmen, that Victor and he become such close friends.
Victor had come on to superintend some of the work that wuz bein’ done
there to fit the place for the reception of his master’s family, who wuz
at that time in New Orleans. And these two young men wuz together
several months and become close friends. They wuz related on their
mother’s side, and they wuz joined together in that closer, subtler
relationship of kindred tastes, feelings, and aspirations.
He finally bought a little carpenter’s shop and settled down to work at
his trade in the little hamlet of Eden Centre, where he soon after
married a pretty mulatto girl, the particular friend of Genieve.
With the remains of the money his mistress had left him he bought a
little cottage—or, that is, this money partly paid for it, and he
thought that with his good health and good trade he could soon finish up
the payment and own his own home.
It wuz a pretty cottage, but fallen into disorder and ruinous looks,
through poor tenants; but his skilful hands and his labor of love soon
made it over into a perfect gem of a cottage.
And there he and his pretty young wife Hester had spent two most happy
years, when Col. Seybert come into the neighborhood to live, and his
roamin’ fancy soon singled out Hester for a victim.
She had been lady’s maid in a wealthy, refined family, and her ladylike
manners and pretty ways wuz as attractive as her face. She loved her
husband, and wuz constant to him with all the fidelity of a lovin’
woman’s heart, and Col. Seybert she detested with all the force of her
nature; but Col. Seybert wuz not one to give way to such a slight
obstacle as a lawful husband.
He thought if Felix wuz out of the way the course of his untrue love
would run comparatively smooth. Why, it seemed to him to be the height
of absurdity that a “nigger” should stand in the way of his wishes.
Why, it wuz aginst all the traditions of his race and the entire
Southern Aristocracy that so slight things as a husband’s honor and
wife’s loyalty should dare oppose the lawless passions of a white
gentleman.
Of course, so reasoned Col. Seybert; the war had made a difference in
terms and enactments, but that wuz about all. The white race wuz still
unconquered in their passion and their arrogance, and the black race wuz
still under their feet; he could testify to the truth of this by his own
lawless life full of deeds of unbridled license and cruelty.
So, wantin’ Victor out of the way, and bein’ exceedingly wroth aginst
him, it wuz easy to persuade certain ignorant poor whites, and the
dispensers of what they called law, that Felix wuz altogether too
successful for a nigger.
He owned a horse, too, an almost capital offence in some parts of the
South.
He had worked overhours to buy this pet animal for Hester’s use as well
as his own. Many a hundred hard hours’ labor, when he wuz already tired
out, had he given for the purchase money of this little animal.
It wuz a pretty, cream-colored creeter, so gentle that it would come up
to the palin’ and eat little bits that Hester would carry out to it
after every meal, with little Ned toddlin’ along by her side; and it wuz
one of the baby boy’s choicest rewards for good behavior to be lifted up
by the side of the kind-faced creeter and pat the glossy skin with his
little fat hands.
This horse seemed to Felix and Hester to be endowed with an almost human
intelligence, and come next to little Ned, their only child, in their
hearts.
And Hester had herself taken in work and helped to pay for the plain
buggy in which she rode out with her boy, and carried Felix to and from
his work when he wuz employed some distance from his home.
But no matter how honestly he had earned this added comfort, no matter
how hard they had both worked for it and how they enjoyed it—
“It wuz puttin’ on too much damned style for a nigger!”
This wuz Col. Seybert’s decree, echoed by many a low, brutal, envious
mind about him, encased in black and white bodies.
And one mornin’, when Hester went out in the bright May sunshine to
carry Posy its mornin’ bit of food from the breakfast-table, with little
Ned followin’ behind with his bit of sugar for it, the pretty creeter
had jest enough strength to drag itself up to its mistress and fix its
pitiful eyes on her in helpless appeal, and dropped dead at her feet.
They found the remains of a poisoned cake in the pasture, and on the
fence wuz pinned a placard bearin’ the inscription—
“No damned niggers can ride wile wit foaks wak afut—so good buy an’ take
warnin’.”
[Illustration:
“LOW, BRUTAL, ENVIOUS MIND”
]
They did not try to keep a horse after this. Felix took his long mornin’
and evenin’ walks with a sore, indignant heart that dragged down his
tired limbs still more.
And Hester wiped away the tears of little Ned, and tried to explain to
his bewildered mind why his pretty favorite could not come up to him
when he called it so long and patiently, holdin’ out the temptin’ lump
of sugar that had always hastened its fleet step.
And she wiped away her own tears, and tried to find poor comfort in the
thought that so many wuz worse off than herself.
She had Felix and Ned left, and her pretty home.
But in the little black settlement of Cedar Hill, not fur away, where
her mother’s relations lived, destitution wuz reignin’.
For on one pretext or another their crops that they worked so hard for
wuz taken from them. The most infamous laws wuz made whereby the white
man could take the black man’s earnings.
The negro had the name of bein’ a freedman, but in reality he wuz a
worse slave than ever, for in the old times he had but one master who
did in most cases take tolerable care of him, for selfishness’ sake, if
no other, and protected him from the selfishness of other people.
But now every one who could take advantage of his ignorance of law did
so, and on one pretext or another robbed him of his hard-earned savings.
And it wuz not considered lawful and right by these higher powers for a
nigger to get much property. It wuz looked upon as an insult to the
superior race about him who had nuthin’, and it wuz considered dangerous
to the old-established law of Might over Right.
It wuz a dangerous precedent, and not to be condoned. So it wuz nuthin’
oncommon if a colored man succeeded by hard work and economy in gettin’
a better house, and had good crops and stock, for a band of masked men
to surround the house at midnight and order its inhabitants, on pain of
death, to leave it all and flee out of the country before daylight.
And if they appealed to the law, it wuz a slender reed indeed to lean
upon, and would break under the slightest pressure.
Indeed, what good could law do, what would decrees and enactments avail
in the face of this terrible armed power, secret but invincible, that
closed round this helpless race like the waves of the treacherous
whirlpool about a twig that wuz cast into its seethin’ waters?
The reign of Terrorism, of Lynch Law, of Might aginst Right wuz rampant,
and if they wanted to save even their poor hunted bodies they had
learned to submit.
So, poor old men and wimmen would rise up from the ruins of their homes,
the homes they had built with so much hard toil. Feeble wimmen and
children, as well as youth and strength, would rise up and move on,
often with sharp, stingin’ lashes to hasten their footsteps.
Move on to another place to have the same scenes enacted over and over
agin.
The crops and stock that wuz left fell as a reward to the victors in the
fray.
And if there wuz a pretty girl amongst the fugitives she too wuz often
and often bound to the conqueror’s chariot wheels till the chariot got
tired of this added ornament, then she fell down before it and the heavy
wheels passed over her. And so exit pretty girl.
But the world wuz full of them; what mattered one more or less? It wuz
no more than if a fly should be brushed away by a too heavy hand, and
have its wings broken. There are plenty more, and of what account is one
poor insect?
Many a poor aged one died broken-hearted in the toilsome exodus from
their homes and treasures.
But there wuz plenty more white-headed old negroes—why, one could hardly
tell one from another—of what use wuz it to mention the failure of one
or two?
Many a young and eager one with white blood throbbin’ in his insulted
and tortured breast stood up and fought for home, and dear ones, and
liberty, all that makes life sweet to prince or peasant.
What became of them? Let the dark forests reveal if they can what took
place in their shadows.
Let the calm heavens speak out and tell of the anguished cries that
swept up on the midnight air from tortured ones. How the stingin’
whip-lash mingled with vain cries for mercy. How frenzied appeals wuz
cut short by the sharp crack of a rifle or the swing of a noose let down
from some tree-branch.
How often Death come as a friend to hush the lips of intolerable pain
and torture!
Sometimes this tyrannical foe felt the vengeance he had called forth by
his cowardly deeds, and a white man or woman fell a victim to the
vengeance of the black race.
Then the Associated Press sent the tidings through an appalled and
horrified country—
“Terrible deed of a black brute—the justly incensed citizens hung the
wretch up to the nearest tree—so perish all the enemies of law and
order.”
And the hull country applauded the deed.
The black man had no reporters in the daily papers; if he had, their
pens would have been worn down to the stump by a tithe of the unrecorded
deeds that are yet, we believe, put down on a record that is onbought
and as free to the poorest class as to the highest, and is not
influenced by political bias.
But these accounts are not open yet, and the full history of these
tragedies are as yet unread by the public.
More awful tragedies than ever took place or ever could take place under
any other circumstances, only where one alien and hated race wuz pitted
aginst the other.
Ignorance on both sides, inherited prejudices, and personal spite, and
animosities blossomin’ out in its fruit of horror.
“They were burnt at the stake; they were sawed asunder; they were
destitute, afflicted, tormented.”
[Illustration:
DEFENDING HIS HOME.
]
Your soul burns within you as you read of these deeds that took place in
Jerusalem; your heart aches for them who wandered about tormented,
hunted down on every side; you lavish your sympathy upon them; but then
you think it wuz a savage age, this wuz one of its brutalities, and you
congratulate yourself upon livin’ in an age of Christian enlightenment.
You think such deeds are impossible in a land over which the Star of
Bethlehem has shone for eighteen hundred years.
Down in many a Southern bayou, in the depths of many a cypress swamp,
near the remains of a violated home, lies a heap of ashes—all that
remains of a man who died fightin’ for his home and his loved ones.
That wuz his only crime—he expiated it with his life. But his liberated
soul soared upwards jest as joyfully, let us hope, as if his body
received the full sacrament of sorrowful respect.
One of the laws enacted of late in the South permits a white man to kill
a black man for a crime committed aginst his honor, and if the white man
commits the same crime and the black man takes the same revenge, he is
killed at once accordin’ to law—one man liberated with rejoicings, the
other shot down like a dog. Do you say the black man is more ignorant?
That is a bad plea.
And wantin’ to act dretful lawful, a short time ago a gang of white
law-makers dug up the dead body of a dark-complexioned husband they had
murdered accordin’ to law, and after breakin’ its bones, hung it over
agin.
He could find in the law no help to defend his home or protect his
honor, no refuge in the grave to which the law had sent him.
I wonder if his freed soul has found some little safe corner in space
fenced round by justice and compassion, where it can hide itself forever
from the laws and civilization of this 19th Century, in this great and
glorious country of the free.
To select this one instance of cruel wrong and injustice from the
innumerable ones similar to it is like takin’ up a grain of sand from
the seashore and contemplatin’ it—the broad seashore that stretches out
on either hand is full of them.
And why should not wrongs, and crimes, and woes be inevitable—why,
indeed?
A race but lately slaves, with the responsible gift of freedom dropped
too soon into their weak hands—
The race so lately the dominant and all-powerful one through the nation,
by the fiction of law dropped down under the legal rule of these so long
down-trodden, oppressed, ignorant masses, what could the result be?
And the law-makers who had proclaimed peace and liberty, on paper, sot
afar contemplatin’ the great work they had done, and left the Reign of
Horror to be enacted by the victors and the victims.
Poor colored man! poor white man! both to be pitied with a pity beyend
words.
It wuz not their fault, it wuz but the failin’ hail and lightnin’ and
tempest out of clouds that had been gatherin’ for ages.
But after the tempest cometh peace. And the eyes of Faith beholds
through the mists and the darkness the sunshine of a calmer time, the
peace and the rest of a fair country, and a free one.
God grant more wisdom to the great commonwealth of this nation, those
whose wills are spoken out by their ballots, to the makers and the doers
of law.
But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom, and continue on.
Felix and Hester, by some good chance, or by the grace of God, had not
been obliged yet to leave their pretty home, so they worked on, tryin’
to be so peaceable and friendly that no fault could be found with them.
Col. Seybert’s attention when he wuz at Seybert Court wuz very annoyin’
to Hester, but she dared not tell Felix, fearin’ that he would avenge
himself on the Colonel, and bloodshed would result.
So she tried to be very careful. She had an old negro woman stay with
her; she took in work all she could at home, and when she went out to
work she wuz prudent and watchful, and, fortunately for her peace of
mind, the Colonel made short stays at his home—he found more potent
attractions elsewhere.
So stood matters when Felix wuz appointed Justice of the Peace at Eden
Centre.
He wuz honestly appointed and honestly elected.
Victor had always declined any office, and had Felix taken his advice he
would also have refused the office.
But perhaps Felix had some ambition. And maybe he had some curiosity to
see what honesty and a pure purpose could accomplish in political
matters, to see what such a marvellous thing could amount to.
Anyway, he accepted the nomination and received the office.
And the night after he wuz elected he and Hester talked the matter over
with some pardonable pride as they sot in the door of their pretty
little parlor in the warm moonlight.
The creepin’ vines on the trellis cast pleasant shadows of leaf and
blossom down over their heads and on the pretty carpet at their feet.
This carpet Hester had bought with her own money and wuz proud of.
The moonlight lay there warm and bright, weavin’ its magic tapestry of
rose leaf and swingin’ vine tendrils long after they wuz asleep in their
little white-draped room near by.
Baby Ned lay fast asleep, with a smile on his moist, flushed face, in
his love-guarded cradle near them.
The little boy did not dream of anything less sweet and peaceful than
his mother’s good-night kiss that had been his last wakin’ remembrance.
But about midnight other shadows, black and terrible ones, trod out and
defaced the swayin’, tremblin’ rose images and silvery moonlight on the
floor.
Tall men in black masks, a rough, brutal gang, surrounded the place and
crashed in the door of the little cottage.
Amongst the foremost wuz Nick Burley, a low, brutal fellow, one of Col.
Seybert’s overseers and boon companions.
He had wanted the office, and his friends greatly desired it for him,
thinkin’ no doubt it would prove many times a great convenience to them.
But Felix won it honorably. He got the majority of votes and wuz
honestly elected.
But Burley and his choice crew of secret Regulators could not brook such
an insult as to have one of a race of slaves preferred to him, so they
proceeded to mete out the punishment to him fit for such offenders.
[Illustration:
THE LEADER.
]
They tore Felix from his bed, leavin’ Hester in a faintin’ fit, and the
little child screamin’ with fright. Took him out in the swamp, bound him
to a tree, and whipped him till he had only a breath of life left in
him; then they put him into a crazy old boat, and launched him out on
the river, tellin’ him “if he ever dared to step his foot into his
native State agin they would burn him alive.”
And this happened in our free country, in a country where impassioned
oritors, on the day set apart to celebrate our nation’s freedom, make
their voices heard even above the roar of blatant cannons, so full of
eloquence and patriotism are they, as they eulogize our country’s
liberty, justice, and independence.
“The only clime under God’s free sky,” they say, “where the law protects
all classes alike, and the vote of the poorest man is as potent as the
loftiest, in moulding our perfect institutions. Where the lowest and the
highest have full and equal civil and political rights.”
Oh, it would have been a goodly sight for our American eagle, proud
emblem of liberty, to have witnessed this midnight scene we have been
describin’; methinks such a spectacle would almost have magnetism to
draw him from his lofty lair on Capitol Hill to swoop down into this
cypress swamp, and perchin’ upon some lofty tree-top, look down and
witness this administration of justice and equal rights, to mark how
these beneficent free laws enwrap all the people and protect them from
foreign invasion and home foes, to see how this nation loves its
children, its black children, who dumbly endured generations of
unexampled wrongs and indignities at its hands, and then in its peril
bared their patient breasts and risked their lives to save it.
How this bird of freedom must laugh in a parrot-like glee, if so grave
and dignified a fowl wuz ever known to indulge in unseemly mirth, to see
the play go on, the masquerade of Folly and Brutality in the garb of
Wisdom and Order, holding such high carnival.
After thus sendin’ Felix half dead from his brutal usage adrift on the
turbid river waves that they felt assured would float him down to a sure
and swift death, the gang of ruffians returned to the cottage to
complete their night’s work.
Col. Seybert had dealt out plenty of bad whiskey to them to keep up
their courage; and Nick Burley, besides satisfying his own vengeance
upon Felix, had been offered a very handsome reward by his master for
gettin’ him out of the way and takin’ Hester to a lonely old cabin of
his in the depths of the big forest.
But they found the pretty cottage empty, and they could only show their
disapprobation of the fact by despoilin’ and ruinin’ the cozy nest from
which the bird had flown.
Hester had recovered from her faintin’ fit jest as they wuz takin’ Felix
to the river; she discovered by their shouts which way they had gone,
followed them at a safe distance, and when they had disappeared she by
almost a miracle swam out to the boat which had drifted into a bayou,
brought it to shore, and nursed him back to life agin.
And for weeks they remained in hidin’, not darin’ to return to their
dear old home that they had earned so hardly, and Felix not dreamin’ of
claimin’ his honest rights as a duly elected Justice of the Peace.
No, he felt that he had had enough of political honors and
preferments—if he could only escape with his life and keep his wife and
boy wuz all he asked.
At last he got a note to Victor, who aided him in his flight to another
State, where he patiently commenced life agin with what courage and
ambition he might bring to bear on it, with his mind forever dwellin’ on
his bitter wrongs and humiliation, and on memories of the old home left
forever behind him—that pretty home with the few acres of orchard and
garden about it. And remembered how he and Hester delighted in every
dollar they paid towards it, and how they had a little feast, and
invited in their friends that sunny June day when the last dollar wuz
paid, and it wuz their own.
And remembered how proudly they had labored to finish and furnish the
little home. How Hester had worked at washin’ and ironin’ and bought the
paper and paint, and pretty curtains and carpet, and how infinitely
happy they had been in it.
How after his hard day’s work he would work in the little sunshiny
garden and orchard settin’ out fruit trees, plantin’ berry bushes and
grape-vines, and how they had together gloried over all their small
successes, and thought that they had the very coziest and happiest home
in the world.
Wall, they had lost it all. The honor of bein’ an American citizen bore
down pretty heavy on him, and he had to give it up.
Wall, twice did Felix try to get a home for himself and his wife in the
Southern States.
But both times, on one pretext or another, did the dominant power
deprive him of his earnings, and take his home from him.
Felix had a good heart; and once, the last time he tried to make a home
under Southern skies, this good heart wuz the cause of his overthrow.
He barely escaped with his life for darin’ to harbor a white teacher who
had left his home and gone down South, followin’ the Bible precepts “to
seek and save them that was lost, and preach the Gospel to every
creature.”
He taught a small colored school week days and preached in an old empty
barn on Sundays.
Little Ned went to his school and wuz greatly attached to him.
But when he wuz ordered to leave the State within twenty-four hours,
because “he wuz tryin’ to teach them brute cattle jest as if they wuz
humans”—
Bein’ frightened and made sick by the violence of his discharge and the
stingin’ arguments with which they enforced their orders, Felix opened
his poor cabin-door and sheltered him; then agin his home wuz surrounded
with a band of armed, masked men, and they only managed to escape with
their lives, and Felix agin left all his poor little improvements on his
home behind him.
He and his family and the white teacher, bruised but undaunted, got to
the railroad by walkin’ almost all night, and so escaped out of their
hands.
The young teacher married soon after a rich Northern woman with kindred
tastes to his own, and they both betook themselves imegiatly after their
marriage to a part of the South a little less ardent in hatred to the
Freedmen’s Bureau, where they are doin’ a good work still in teachin’ a
colored school.
But the next time Felix made a start in life he commenced it in a
Northern city.
There the best thing he could get in the way of a home for his wife and
child wuz a room way up on the top of a crazy old tenement-house
tenanted by noisy, drunken, profane men and women.
For drunkenness, and brawls, and sickenin’ horrors are not confined to
Southern soil; they are also indigenous to the North.
[Illustration:
FELIX AND THE TEACHER.
]
And the gaunt wolves of Sin and Want howl to the moon under the Northern
skies as well as Southern.
And stayin’ there—not livin’—workin’ hard as he did through the day, and
uninvitin’ as his home wuz after his labor wuz over, he could set down
for a few minutes with Hester, only to have their quiet broken by
drunken brawls, and oaths, and fights, and all sounds and sights of woe
and squalor.
In such circumstances as these the teachings and importunate words of
Victor about colonization fell upon a willin’ ear.
For the seeds that had laid in Victor’s heart, waitin’ only the warm sun
to bring them to life, had sprung up into full vigor and bloom under the
influence of Genieve’s prophetic words, and afterwards by his own
observation and study.
Victor come to believe with his whole soul and heart that the future of
his race depended upon their leavin’ this land and goin’ fur away from
all the cursed influences that had fettered them so long here and found
a new home and country for themselves—a New Republic.
And as Felix, with whom Victor had been in constant correspondence, read
these glowin’ words and arguments, they fell upon good ground.
Truly the soil in Felix’ breast had been turned, and ploughed, and made
ready for the seed of liberty to be planted and spring up.
All of the time while he wuz gettin’ his education so hardly, spendin’
every hour he could possibly spare from his work in endeavorin’ to fit
himself for a future of freedom and usefulness—all this while he had
been told, been taught in sermons and religious and secular literature,
and read it in law books and statutes, that merit wuz the only patent of
nobility in this country, that merit would win the prizes of life.
To this end he had worked, had shaped his own life to habits of honesty
and industry; he had surrounded himself with all the safeguards possible
to keep him in the right path, chose for his intimate friends young men
who cherished the same lofty ideals that he did.
He attended church constantly, became an earnest Christian, had obtained
an excellent education, and then it wuz not strange that he should look
about him to try to behold the rewards that merit wins. One illustration
of this reward of merit we have jest given—when he wuz elected Justice
of the Peace.
That wuz a fair sample of the rewards of merit offered to his race.
He wuz not alone in it; no, he looked about him, and he saw thousands
and thousands of young colored men who had studied jest as hard as he
had—they too had dreams of this great truth that had been dinned in
their ears so long—that Christianity, education, and merit will win all
the prizes of life.
They studied, they worked hard, they pursued lofty ideals, and when they
left their schools they wuz Christians, they wuz educated, they wuz
meritorious. Their minds wuz bright and well equipped, their tastes wuz
refined, they wuz good.
Of what avail wuz it all, so Felix asked himself, when they wuz pushed
back to the wall by brazen audacity and ignorance—and intolerance and
ignorance and immorality, if encased in a white skin, might snatch all
the prizes out of their hands and take their places in the front ranks
of life.
In many States in the South they could not get the place of a policeman
if it depended upon the integrity of the ballot.
What sort of an education, a finishing school, wuz this for the young
colored man of the South? Wuz such unblushin’ fraud, and lies, and
cheatin’, and heart-burnings, and sickenin’ disappointments, and deeds
of violence, a wholesome atmosphere for young people to learn morals in?
Felix, as he looked about him and saw the thousands and thousands and
thousands of young men, graduates of schools and members of churches, in
jest the same condition as he himself wuz—he might be pardoned if he
asked himself if the long horror of the War had been in vain.
If Lincoln and Grant and all the other pure souls had toiled and died in
vain.
If the millions of dollars given by Northern philanthropy, and the noble
lives of sacrifice in teachin’ and preachin’, had been given in vain.
He might be pardoned if he said:
“Give these young colored people new doctrines or new laws; teach them
less Christianity by book and a little more practical religion and
justice by object lesson; give these law-abiding, native-born citizens
of this Republic a tithe of the rights and privileges enjoyed by the
lowest criminal foreigner newly landed on our shores, or else let this
addition be made to their creeds:
“‘Merit has nothing to do in determining a man’s future life.’
“‘Injustice shall conquer in the end.’
“‘Fraud shall be victor over honest and Christian endeavor.’
“‘The colored man, by reason of his dark complexion, shall be forever
deprived of all the blessings and privileges of the Government he risked
his life to save.’”
Put this into the creeds you teach the young colored men and women, and
they will at least respect you for bein’ sincere and truthful.
Felix felt all this, and more too—more than I could set down if my pen
wuz as long as from here to the moon, and longer.
And feelin’ as he did, is it any wonder that all his mind and heart wuz
sot on this skeme of Victor’s, and all his hopes and aims pinted towards
a new home, where he could take his wife and child and be free? where he
felt that he could own them and own a right to make a home for ’em—a
home where the American eagle, proud bird of Liberty, could nevermore
tear him with her talons, or claw his trustin’ eyes out with her sharp
bill?
He felt this, but the eagle wuzn’t to blame—it wuz her keepers, if he
had only known it. The eagle wuz in a hard place. I felt real sorry for
the fowl, and have for a number of times. She has been in many a tight
place before now—places where it wuz all she could do to squeeze out her
wings and shake ’em a mite.
Wall, Felix worked hard, and so did Hester, with this end in view—to go
fur away and be at rest.
Felix, after many efforts, got a place as workman on a big buildin’ that
wuz bein’ put up; and Hester got a place as fine washerwoman and
laundress with good wages.
They lived cheap as they could, and at the time when I first hearn about
’em (from Genieve) they had got about the amount saved that Victor
thought they would require.
Felix wanted at least four or five hundred dollars to start with. You
see, he and Victor could look ahead, which is more than some of their
mothers’ race can do.
Felix knew he had got to have something to live on for the first year
after he got to the Promised Land. He didn’t mean to pin his faith onto
anybody or anything. He felt that his family’s safety and well-bein’
depended on him, and he wuz bound to labor with that end in view.
And Victor wuz workin’ as hard as Felix; workin’ quietly and secretly as
possible, deemin’ that the best way to avert danger from them and make
success possible.
He wuz workin’ as a standard-bearer, a tryin’ to make his people hear
his cry to move forward into the Promised Land, into their own land,
from whence they had been torn with violence, but to which they should
return with knowledge and wisdom learned in the hard school of martyrdom
and slavery.
He knew that to preach this doctrine to all his people would be like
tryin’ to stop the course of the wind by a shout.
The old, the feeble, and those who wuz attached by strong ties of love
or gratitude to this Western land—and Heaven knows there wuz many such
who had received such kind treatment from the dominant race (if kindness
is possible in slavery) that their hearts wuz knit to the spot where
their old masters and mistresses wuz—
These people he did not seek to disturb with dreams of new homes in a
freer land—love makes labor light—they wuzn’t unhappy.
[Illustration:
“THE OLD, THE FEEBLE.”
]
And then there wuz many who had got peaceful homes in settlements and
cities who wuz contented and doin’ well—or, that is, what they thought
well—these Victor did not seek to change.
But for the young, the educated, the resolute, the ambitious he tried to
influence their eager, active minds with his own ideal of a New
Republic.
Where his people, so long down-trodden, might have a chance to become a
great nation, with a future glorious with a grandeur the colder white
race never dreamed of.
When Victor heard scoffin’ prophecies of the negro’s incapacity to
govern himself or others, he thought of the example of that hero saint,
Toussaint L’Ouverture. How he, a pure negro, with no white blood in his
veins, carved out the freedom of his race.
How, brave as a lion, this untaught man fought aginst overwhelmin’ odds,
and won battles that the best-trained soldier would almost have
despaired of; surmounted difficulties and won victories that would have
proved well-nigh impossible to a Washington or a Napoleon. How, untaught
in diplomacy, he reconciled conflictin’ interests that would have
baffled our wisest statesmen.
Clement and merciful, for he always shrank from causin’ bloodshed till
war or ruin wuz inevitable.
Generous, for when the storm burst his first thought wuz to save his
master’s family.
Wise and prudent, he founded and ruled over a peaceful and prosperous
republic till he wuz betrayed to his ruin—not by the black race, but by
the cupidity, and treachery, and envy of the white race.
Perished by starvation in a dungeon for the sole fault of bein’ superior
and nobler than the white people who envied his success and sought his
overthrow.
Victor thought if one of his own race could do this marvellous thing,
amidst such warrin’ and diverse elements and opposin’ races, what would
it not be possible for his people to do in a new and free country, in a
state of peace and quiet, with only the interests and advancement of
this one race to look after.
He dreamed in his hopeful visions of a fresh new civilization springin’
up anew in the soil that had nurtured the first civilization.
For in the East, where the star had first shone and travelled on to the
West, then back agin to the mystical wonder-laden East—thither did
Victor’s rapt eyes follow it. And Genieve, too, how she dreamed and
longed for that new kingdom!
All through their dreary servitude, tortured and wretched, it seemed as
if God gave to the believers amongst this people songs in the night, as
if His spirit breathed through the simple hymns they sung to lighten the
hours of bondage.
Some spirit, some inspiration seemed to breathe through their songs that
brought tears to eyes unused to weepin’.
The most cultured, the most refined found, in spite of themselves, that
they had wet cheeks and beatin’ hearts after listenin’ to these simple
strains.
It could not have been for their musical worth—for they had little; it
could not have been for their literary value—for they had none.
What could it have been in them that charmed alike prince and peasant
but the spirit of the Most High, who come down to speak hope and cheer
to His too burdened and hopeless ones and lighten their captivity?
Genieve thought that when this people, whom God chose to honor in this
way, and whom He had led in such strange ways out of the jungles of
ignorance in Africa, through the hard school of American slavery, out
into liberty—she dreamed it was for the express purpose of educating her
race so they might go back and redeem this dark land; and then she
fancied that the Presence that had stayed with them through the dark
night of sorrow would in the full day of their civilization shine out
with a marvellous light, and they would be peculiarly under His care.
She dreamed that this childlike, warm-hearted race would indeed “see
God” as the colder and more philosophical races could not.
So, as I begun to say—but what a hand to eppisode I am, and what a
digressor I be—and I believe my soul it grows on me—
Wall, as I begun to say more’n half an hour ago, if it wuz a minute,
Col. Seybert thought he had another cause of enmity aginst Victor, for
he had strong proofs that it wuz he who had helped release Hester from
his clutches.
And although it wuz kept secret as possible, yet rumors had reached Col.
Seybert of Victor’s dreams of the colonization of his race.
And to this Col. Seybert wuz opposed with all the selfishness and
haughty arrogance of his nature. Why, who would work his big plantations
if it wuz not for the blacks? And if this movement should succeed he
knew it would draw off the best, and most intelligent, and industrious
element, and the ones left in the South would charge double wages, so he
reasoned.
[Illustration:
“HIS OVERSEER”
]
And as to Victor, he vowed to himself with a big round oath that he
should _not_ go. He _should not_ leave him.
Why, who would look after his interests as he always had—who would keep
his affairs from goin’ to ruin durin’ his long sprees? Where could be
found another servant with his absolute honesty, and intelligence, and
care for his interests?
Why, as he thought of it, all the old slaveholdin’ instinct of
compellin’ his inferiors, the hereditary impulse to rule or ruin rose in
him, and his face grew red with wrath, and he vowed agin, with a still
more sonorous oath, “That Victor should not go,” and he added, with a
true slave-driver’s emphasis, “_not alive_.”
His overseer and kindred spirit, Nick Burley, hated Victor; for, added
to the hated knowledge that Victor wuz his superior in every way, wuz
the belief that he had befriended Felix. At all events, Victor and Felix
wuz close friends always, and Burley hated Felix worse if possible than
he did Victor.
But to Victor and Genieve all these shadows lay fur away on the horizon
almost unseen, and anyway almost forgotten in the clear sunshine of
their happiness.
For true love will make sunshine everywhere.
[Illustration:
“A LITTLE TUMBLE-DOWN COTTAGE.”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------