I was bending over my easel, hard at work upon a full-length portrait
of a young girl in a costume of fifty years ago, when the door of my
studio opened softly and Aunt Chloe came in.
"Good-mawnin', suh! I did n' think you'd come to-day, bein' a Sunday,"
she said, with a slight bend of her knees. "I'll jes' sweep up a lil
mite; doan' ye move, I won't 'sturb ye."
Aunt Chloe had first opened my door a year before with a note from
Marny, a brother brush, which began with "Here is an old Southern
mammy who has seen better days; paint her if you can," and ended with,
"Any way, give her a job."
The bearer of the note was indeed the ideal mammy, even to the
bandanna handkerchief bound about her head, and the capacious waist
and ample bosom--the lullaby resting-place for many a child, white and
black. I had never seen a real one in the flesh before. I had heard
about them in my earlier days. Daddy Billy, my father's body servant
and my father's slave, who lived to be ninety-four, had told me of his
own Aunt Mirey, who had died in the old days, but too far back for me
to remember. And I had listened, when a boy, to the traditions
connected with the plantations of my ancestors,--of the Keziahs and
Mammy Crouches and Mammy Janes,--but I had never looked into the eyes
of one of the old school until I saw Aunt Chloe, nor had I ever fully
realized how quaintly courteous and gentle one of them could be until,
with an old-time manner, born of a training seldom found outside of
the old Southern homes, she bent forward, spread her apron with both
hands, and with a little backward dip had said as she left me that
first day: "Thank ye, suh! I'll come eve'y Sunday mawnin'. I'll do my
best to please ye, an' I specs I kin."
I do not often work on Sunday, but my picture had been too long
delayed waiting for a faded wedding dress worn once by the original
when she was a bride, and which had only been found when two of her
descendants had ransacked their respective garrets.
"Mus' be mighty driv, suh," she said, "a-workin' on de Sabbath day.
Golly, but dat's a purty lady!" and she put down her pail. "I see it
las' Sunday when I come in, but she didn't had dem ruffles 'round her
neck den dat you done gib her. 'Clar' to goodness, dat chile look like
she was jes' a-gwine to speak."
[Illustration: AUNT CHLOE]
Aunt Chloe was leaning on her broom, her eyes scrutinizing the
portrait.
"Well, if dat doan' beat de lan'. I ain't never seen none o' dem
frocks since de ole times. An' dem lil low shoes wid de ribbons
crossed on de ankles! She's de livin' pussonecation--she is so, for a
fac'. Uhm! Uhm!" (It is difficult to convey this peculiar sound of
complete approval in so many letters.)
"Did you ever know anybody like her?" I asked.
The old woman straightened her back, and for a moment her eyes looked
into mine. I had often tried to draw from her something of her earlier
life, but she had always evaded my questions. Marny had told me that
his attempts had at first been equally disappointing.
"Body as ole's me, suh, seen a plenty o' people." Then her eyes sought
the canvas again.
After a moment's pause she said, as if to herself: "You's de real
quality, chile, dat you is; eve'y spec an' spinch o' ye."