About 10 o'clock the sunlight entered through the shutters and awoke
him. He threw one arm up over his eyes to intercept the burning rays.
As he lay out-stretched and stripped of grotesque rags, it could be
better seen in what a mould nature had cast his figure. His breast,
bare and tanned, was barred by full, arching ribs and knotted by
crossing muscles; and his shirt-sleeve, falling away to the shoulder
from his bent arm, revealed its crowded muscles in the high relief of
heroic bronze. For, although he had been sold as a vagrant, old King
Solomon had in earlier years followed the trade of a digger of cellars,
and the strenuous use of mattock and spade had developed every sinew to
the utmost. His whole person, now half naked and in repose, was full
of the suggestions of unspent power. Only his face, swollen and red,
only his eyes, bloodshot and dull, bore the impress of wasted vitality.
There, all too plainly stamped, were the passions long since raging and
still on fire.
The sunlight had stirred him to but a low degree of consciousness, and
some minutes passed before he realized that a stifling, resinous fume
impregnated the air. He sniffed it quickly; through the window seemed
to come the smell of burning tar. He sat up on the edge of the bed and
vainly tried to clear his thoughts.
The room was a clean but poor habitation--uncarpeted, whitewashed,
with a piece or two of the cheapest furniture, and a row of pegs on
one wall, where usually hung those tattered coats and pantaloons,
miscellaneously collected, that were his purple and fine linen. He
turned his eyes in this direction now and noticed that his clothes were
missing. The old shoes had disappeared from their corner; the cigar
stumps, picked up here and there in the streets according to his wont,
were gone from the mantel-piece. Near the door was a large bundle tied
up in a sheet. In a state of bewilderment, he asked himself what it all
meant. Then a sense of the silence in the street below possessed him.
At this hour he was used to hear noises enough--from Hugh Lonney's new
bath-house on one side, from Harry Sikes's barber-shop on the other.
A mysterious feeling of terror crept over and helped to sober him. How
long had he lain asleep? By degrees he seemed to remember that two or
three times he had awakened far enough to drink from the bottle under
his pillow, only to sink again into heavier stupefaction. By degrees,
too, he seemed to remember that other things had happened--a driving of
vehicles this way and that, a hurrying of people along the street. He
had thought it the breaking-up of M. Xaupi's ball. More than once had
not some one shaken and tried to arouse him? Through the wall of Harry
Sikes's barber-shop had he not heard cries of pain--sobs of distress?
He staggered to the window, threw open the shutters, and, kneeling at
the sill, looked out. The street was deserted. The houses opposite were
closed. Cats were sleeping in the silent door-ways. But as he looked up
and down he caught sight of people hurrying along cross-streets. From a
distant lumber-yard came the muffled sound of rapid hammerings. On the
air was the faint roll of vehicles--the hush and the vague noises of a
general terrifying commotion.
In the middle of the street below him a keg was burning, and, as he
looked, the hoops gave way, the tar spread out like a stream of black
lava, and a cloud of inky smoke and deep-red furious flame burst upward
through the sagging air. Just beneath the window a common cart had
been backed close up to the door of the house. In it had been thrown a
few small articles of furniture, and on the bottom bedclothes had been
spread out as if for a pallet. While he looked old Charlotte hurried
out with a pillow.
He called down to her in a strange, unsteady voice:
"What is the matter? What are you doing, Aunt Charlotte?"
She uttered a cry, dropped the pillow, and stared up at him. Her face
looked dry and wrinkled.
"My God! De chol'ra's in town! I'm waitin' on you! Dress, en come down
en fetch de bun'le by de dooh." And she hurried back into the house.
But he continued leaning on his folded arms, his brain stunned by the
shock of the intelligence. Suddenly he leaned far out and looked down
at the closed shutters of the barber-shop. Old Charlotte reappeared.
"Where is Harry Sikes?" he asked.
"Dead en buried."
"When did he die?"
"Yestidd'y evenin'."
"What day is this?"
"Sadd'y."
M. Xaupi's ball had been on Thursday evening. That night the cholera
had broken out. He had lain in his drunken stupor ever since. Their
talk had lasted but a minute, but she looked up anxiously and urged him.
"D' ain' no time to was'e, honey! D' ain' no time to was'e. I done got
dis cyart to tek you 'way in, en I be ready to start in a minute. Put
yo' clo'es on en bring de bun'le wid all yo' yudder things in it."
With incredible activity she climbed into the cart and began to roll
up the bedclothes. In reality she had made up her mind to put him into
the cart, and the pallet had been made for him to lie and finish his
drunken sleep on, while she drove him away to a place of safety.
Still he did not move from the window-sill. He was thinking of Harry
Sikes, who had shaved him many a time for nothing. Then he suddenly
called down to her:
"Have many died of the cholera? Are there many cases in town?"
She went on with her preparations and took no notice of him. He
repeated the question. She got down quickly from the cart and began to
mount the staircase. He went back to bed, pulled the sheet up over him,
and propped himself up among the pillows. Her soft, heavy footsteps
slurred on the stair-way as though her strength were failing, and as
soon as she entered the room she sank into a chair, overcome with
terror. He looked at her with a sudden sense of pity.
"Don't be frightened," he said, kindly. "It might only make it the
worse for you."
"I can' he'p it, honey," she answered, wringing her hands and rocking
herself to and fro; "de ole niggah can' he'p it. If de Lohd jes spah
me to git out'n dis town wid you! Honey, ain' you able to put on yo'
clo'es?"
"You've tied them all up in the sheet."
"De Lohd he'p de crazy ole niggah!"
She started up and tugged at the bundle, and laid out a suit of his
clothes, if things so incongruous could be called a suit.
"Have many people died of the cholera?"
"Dey been dyin' like sheep ev' since yestidd'y mohnin'--all day, en all
las' night, en dis mohnin'! De man he done lock up de huss, en dey been
buryin' 'em in cyarts. En de grave-diggah he done run away, en hit look
like d' ain' nobody to dig de graves."
She bent over the bundle, tying again the four corners of the sheet.
Through the window came the sound of the quick hammers driving nails.
She threw up her arms into the air, and then seizing the bundle dragged
it rapidly to the door.
"You heah dat? Dey nailin' up cawfins in de lumbah-yahd! Put on yo'
clo'es, honey, en come on."
A resolution had suddenly taken shape in his mind.
"Go on away and save your life. Don't wait for me; I'm not going. And
good-bye, Aunt Charlotte, in case I don't see you any more. You've been
very kind to me--kinder than I deserved. Where have you put my mattock
and spade?"
He said this very quietly, and sat up on the edge of the bed, his feet
hanging down, and his hand stretched out towards her.
"Honey," she explained, coaxingly, from where she stood, "can't you
sobah up a little en put on yo' clo'es? I gwine to tek you 'way to
de country. You don' wan' no tools. You can' dig no cellahs now. De
chol'ra's in town en de people's dyin' like sheep."
"I expect they will need me," he answered.
She perceived now that he was sober. For an instant her own fear was
forgotten in an outburst of resentment and indignation.
"Dig graves fuh 'em, when dey put you up on de block en sell you same
ez you wuz a niggah! Dig graves fuh 'em, when dey allers callin' you
names on de street en makin' fun o' you!"
"They are not to blame. I have brought it on myself."
"But we can' stay heah en die o' de chol'ra!"
"You mustn't stay. You must go away at once."
"But if I go, who gwine tek cyah o' _you_?"
"Nobody."
She came quickly across the room to the bed, fell on her knees, clasped
his feet to her breast, and looked up into his face with an expression
of imploring tenderness. Then, with incoherent cries and with sobs and
tears, she pleaded with him--pleaded for dear life; his and her own.
It was a strange scene. What historian of the heart will ever be able
to do justice to those peculiar ties which bound the heart of the negro
in years gone by to a race of not always worthy masters? This old
Virginia nurse had known King Solomon when he was a boy playing with
her young master, till that young master died on the way to Kentucky.
At the death of her mistress she had become free with a little
property. By thrift and industry she had greatly enlarged this. Years
passed and she became the only surviving member of the Virginian
household, which had emigrated early in the century to the Blue-grass
Region. The same wave of emigration had brought in old King Solomon
from the same neighborhood. As she had risen in life, he had sunk.
She sat on the sidewalks selling her fruits and cakes; he sat on the
sidewalks more idle, more ragged and dissolute. On no other basis than
these facts she began to assume a sort of maternal pitying care of him,
patching his rags, letting him have money for his vices, and when, a
year or two before, he had ceased working almost entirely, giving him a
room in her house and taking in payment what he chose to pay.
He brushed his hand quickly across his eyes as she knelt before him
now, clasping his feet to her bosom. From coaxing him as an intractable
child she had, in the old servile fashion, fallen to imploring him,
with touching forgetfulness of their real relations:
"O my marseter! O my marseter Solomon! Go 'way en save yo' life, en tek
yo' po' ole niggah wid you!"
But his resolution was formed, and he refused to go. A hurried footstep
paused beneath the window and a loud voice called up. The old nurse got
up and went to the window. A man was standing by the cart at her door.
"For God's sake let me have this cart to take my wife and little
children away to the country! There is not a vehicle to be had in town.
I will pay you--" He stopped, seeing the distress on her face.
"Is he dead?" he asked, for he knew of her care of old King Solomon.
"He _will_ die!" she sobbed. "Tilt de t'ings out on de pavement. I
gwine t' stay wid 'im en tek cyah o' 'im."