He had a handsome, cheerful countenance--Colonel Amory--and a genial
voice. He talked a deal and talked well, was a three-bottle man and
gallant with women, a hunter, a dead shot, admirable with a horse and
a dog and an obedient Negro, an out-of-doors man, yet with a taste
for politics, a vestryman, a member of the Governor’s Council, and a
possessor of books which sometimes he read and sometimes only talked
of reading. A part of all this David Scott had opportunities for
observing, and another part was told him by others.
Axeman during the winter, clearing land for tobacco; man of the tobacco
fields so soon as spring set in; in the fields the hot, hot summer
long, roused at dawn, worked till eve, dead with sleep before the
evening star had sunk--as little as any laborer at home did I have
touch around the circle of Colonel Amory’s life. But since I had had
some knowledge of laird’s life, squire’s life, lord of the manor’s
life, across the sea, I reckoned well enough how this southern, new
land, life of easy business, ran straight or meandered through the
year. It had a fairness and ease and a good nature, and the good nature
was for all so long as all swung to the commanded music; and the ease
was the hunter’s ease with good dogs around; and as for the fairness,
in small matters it tripped forward, but in large it always curtseyed
to the heathenish law. But almost every one thought him--and he thought
himself--a kind master, not seeing that to be master at all was the
trouble.
Big David Scott cut down trees for Colonel Amory, to clear Colonel
Amory’s land, to plant Colonel Amory’s tobacco that would freight the
_King William_ and other ships to England, that would be sold,
that would buy more young men to clear more land for Colonel Amory. The
years pass slow when one is young.
Up the river, a few miles from Williamsburg, lay Amory Hall. Land
and land, some thousands of acres, the “great house”, the various
“quarters”--Pine Tree quarter, Big Spring quarter, Indian quarter, Old
Mill quarter--the barns and tobacco houses and offices of kinds, the
two overseers’ houses, the mill and smithy and other workshops, the
store, the creek landing, the river landing--that was Amory Hall. The
fields were tobacco and maize and a small amount of wheat and other
grains, but tobacco, tobacco, tobacco overtopped and overspread. The
great house stood two miles from my quarter, Old Mill quarter. I rarely
saw it close at hand--a good-sized brick house, like many in England,
with trees and shrubs and flowers about it. All day, all those blazing
summer days in shadeless fields, the trees looked so good!
At Old Mill were twenty men. Much the smallest quarter and remotest
from the great house, it touched on one side a forest uncut since time
began, and on the other tobacco. In the winter we felled the first, in
the summer we worked that tobacco.
The twenty men were not always the same. They were changed, drafted
in and drafted out. Nineteen of the twenty. But David Scott, who was
“political”, rested at Old Mill for three long years. They seemed to
have said that they would never change him.
Five of the men were white, the rest black. It was the penal quarter
for refractory or erring white servants or for any who for reasons were
not to be indulged. They came and stayed and went, but I stayed. Small
cabins, two or three men to a cabin, and one larger building where we
ate, the white at one end, the black at the other, a black man cooking
for all. And at a little distance the house of Barget--Mr. Barget--who
oversaw us. A ragged, dreamy place--Old Mill quarter.
We had enough to eat, though of a coarse and monotonous sort. We slept
on pallets stuffed with corn husks. In winter there was covering
enough, and at any time we might have a roaring fire. In summer we
dragged our beds out of the stifling cabin. Our clothing was poor
enough, but a Negro woman washed our shirts and drawers and stockings
and kept us fairly clean. In all this we were no worse off than the
laboring poor across the ocean. Better off! Barget was a decent man.
When the general overseer, Williams, came around as he did every three
or four days, still there were decent words and decent treatment. When
Colonel Amory rode a splendid horse our way he was cheer itself and
almost fatherly and all that. There were even holidays, and we did not
work on the Sabbath, and some leisure could be stolen out of most week
days. Not much, but a little to gloat over. When it was exceedingly hot
weather, we lay under a pine tree in the middle day for an hour or two.
On great occasions we had a little rum to drink. The white servants
were expected to go to church, there being one within two miles. The
preacher often preached for a quarter of an hour directly to us, seated
on the hard benches at the back, behind all the others. Our happy lot,
to change hopelessness at home in England for hope here in America!
There were men sitting near me, with serious, rugged faces, who tasted
that hope. I saw it in their eyes. At last, after hard service, they
would lay hands upon their own fortune, and she would be good. I saw
it, I saw it! We heard stories of men, now highly prosperous, planters
and burgesses, who had come out as some other man’s servants. The
preacher said it lay in our own hands, and in a measure what he said
was true.
There were those white men who chose a sturdy patience, and those who
never chose at all, but stayed or went in apathy. And others were
always reckoning how much longer or how little longer they had to
serve. In the meantime, in some ways, it was worse here in Virginia
than at home in England, and in some ways it was better. A good many
ways, said some of them. It was not just heaven in Merry England
for poor men! But while all that was true, and while this especial
plantation had a name for an almost foolish kindness, and while the
Law, without wink or blink, doubled the caught runaway’s original
term of service, and while almost to a man runaways were caught and
returned--yet men ran away, men black and white ran away.
In much, with many, it was the very ease of the first step, the first
dozen steps. You were hewing, two and two together, at the edge of
the step-by-step retreating forest, on the one side stumps and fallen
trees and the broad light and the sound of axes and the ever-present
sense of masters and overseers and Monotony that had begun to gibber at
you--on the other the deep, deep forest, right beside you, whispering,
beckoning, “Come with me! I stretch afar, so far, away from all this!”
Or you transplanted or weeded or wormed or suckered or cut tobacco at
the edge of a huge swamp, and the reeds whispered, “Here is the little
path--you know it. Put down the hoe, slip in here! I will meet over
you and hide you. Tom and Dick will not tell. To-night you may make
the river _and find a boat_. You know there is deep forest on the
other side and a trail or something into Carolina.”
Men black or white sometimes went without forethought, without
intending to go, just because Freedom suddenly sang to them, or
Monotony lifted and clanked her chains. The first time David Scott went
he did that, and afterwards cursed himself for his improvidence.
Days, weeks, months. The first year. Into the second year.
Once, in the first six months, I was sent with a message from Barget
to Williams the head overseer, and not finding him, made bold to go on
to the great house where they said he was. There was a front door and
a back door, just as it is in Europe, so I went to the back and asked
a negro wench for news, and I was heard from a room to the right, and
a voice called to me to come in. Here, in his place of business and
a great armchair, sat Colonel Amory, and on a much lesser chair the
overseer, and at the back of the room, on a high stool before a desk
and a huge ledger, Gervase Morrison. I gave my message--three drunken
Indians had come across from their town and were making trouble--and
the overseer said that he would ride down and get them laid by the
heels, “If your honor has finished----?”
“Aye, go ahead, Williams.”
Williams departed, and David Scott made to follow him out of the room,
but was halted ere he got to the door.
“You’re the Jacobite. Would you like a morsel of news from home, man?
The _Sally_ has just brought London letters.”
Naturally I would, and he spread a letter and read me of how great
and good was King George and England, and the French were beaten and
London bells were ringing, while in Scotland the wild Highlanders were
being disarmed and forbidden to wear their ancient costume, and Stuart
Scotland generally was in course of “pacification.” “And that’s the
best thing that could happen to you, as you’ll be agreeing before you
die! What turned you the wrong way?”
“What turned you the ‘right’ way?” I asked. “Family and bringing up?
Perhaps neither way is just the path to glory.”
“You’ve got a dour way with you,” he answered. “But you’re pithy.” His
good nature was enormous. “Now that you’re here, would you like to see
the house?” So he condescended to show it to me, and I’ve known Scots
lairds do the same for a cotter.
It was a good, big house, fairly furnished, with silver in the dining
room, and some portraits and a spinet and books in a spacious parlor.
He gave me a single glass of wine in the dining room, and in the hall
he showed me a drawing of what on earth but a Scotch glen with beck
and mountain, and in the parlor a young woman in a flowered print gown
with her hair richly done was playing the spinet. She looked over her
shoulder and made a mouth and went on making music, and what should she
be playing but an auld Scots air named “The Four Maries”?
She did not speak to me, and when the master was done with me I went
away out of that house, and I cursed the Stuarts and the ways that men
are fooled in an ill world.
As I was walking a voice behind me called, and there was Gervase
Morrison, overtaking me. “I’ve got an hour and I’ll go with you a bit.
Rather a handsome place! Not much beside some English lords of the
land, but very creditable for a new country.”
I said, “He showed me over, and thought I would take the purest
pleasure in all that was his and not mine. The pleasure of
contemplating God and Heaven.--Skulls are so thick!”
“Granted. However, he’s not a bad sort.”
“No. Only stupid.”
“Oh, we’re mostly stupid when we get on top!”
We went on by locust trees in bloom and cedar trees. “Who put him on
top? Not himself, I’m thinking! If it’s the system of things, then it’s
a damned system!”
“You wanted to put James Stuart on top.”
“I don’t know if _I_ wanted to or not! I got caught. We all get
caught in a net. And something or somebody eats us.”
A small, black, land turtle lay on his back in our path, some urchin
having turned him over and left him there. Morrison stooped and turned
him correctly, and he put forth feet and a head and crept away. “The
system now. Systems interest me. I’m not blindly plunging against the
thing that hurts me, as you are. For one thing, I’m older. Then perhaps
I am slow-going like that tortoise and haven’t your consciousness
of pain.--The system. We must have--or we think we must--tobacco to
smoke and snuff. Or if it was not tobacco, it would be wheat or maize.
Farther south, sugar and rum. We must have them, or others like them.
We must eat and drink and be clothed and have desires fulfilled, like
the fireflies here for number. Well, there might be two ways. Everybody
might work, no man holding more acres than he and his family could
till. I work--my name for instance, being Robert Amory--and master my
son and my fine daughters. Everywhere workers. No exceptions. Helping
one another as is fit--combining to make work easier--taking counsel
to make it intelligent, to find better methods, save waste and so
forth--sifting the mind man into the mind place, and the hand man
into the hand place, but keeping neither there longer than he himself
showed it was his own. Probably a deal of our toil to-day would be
thrown overboard. When we had to make our own fantastic luxuries,
probably we’d begin to crack up the Stoics! We’d teach our pleasures to
hang on other boughs. No bad thing either! The whole’s worth trying,
sometimes I think, just from that point of view. What good there was
would be accessible to all. Nothing artificial in between. Not Law and
Custom shrieking, ‘You can’t’, when Common Sense is thundering that
you should. There would be no slaves nor servants. In short, it would
be Scriptural, ‘Be ye servants of one another, in honor preferring one
another.’ Something like that. All gaining by whatever each did. All
rising together. It’s a dream! Of course it presupposes that all would
try--even if not in quite the same degree. But each according to his
light. And those with most light would be very patient and sunny kind
with those who had less.”
“That’s a religious Society.”
“Yes. A religious Society.”
“What’s the other?”
“The other is what we’ve got.”
“Ha, yes!”
“The few with much, the many with little. The few doing about as
Colonel Amory is doing with the much. The many doing about as we
do with the little. And the few may go down into the many, and a
corresponding number of the many come up into the few--and there’s no
change that counts. So we spin around the sun.”
David Scott cursed the plantation and Virginia and the spinning
earth. “It isn’t worth the while,” said Morrison. “I am coming to the
conclusion that there’s a bare possibility that it’s in oneself. If
it’s not there, it’s nowhere.”
“What is?”
“Oh, God or salvation or wisdom, or whatever you call it!”
“I call it a Jack o’ Lantern,” said David Scott and thought of his next
runaway, and also of a quartern of rum that he had enticed out of the
hands of those Indians.