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The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line:
Electronic Edition.
Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell), 1858-1932
Illustrated by Clyde O. De Land
Text scanned (OCR) by Don Sechler
Text encoded by Natalia Smith and Jordan Davis
First edition, 1997.
ca. 500K
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1997.
Call number VC813 C52w 1901 (North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill)
Source Description:
The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line
by Charles W. Chesnutt
Boston and New York,
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
1901
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digitization project Documenting the American South
Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
All quotation marks and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively.
All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively.
Indentation in lines has not been preserved.
Running titles have not been preserved.
Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell checkers.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Languages Used:
- French
- Latin
- Italian
LC Subject Headings:
- African Americans -- Color -- Social aspects -- Fiction.
- African Americans -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction.
- African Americans -- North Carolina -- Fiction.
- African Americans -- Social life and customs -- Fiction.
- United States -- Race relations -- Fiction.
Revision History:
-
2009-02-07,
Mike Millner
revised TEIHeader and updated author name to match LC name authority.
-
1997-04-15,
Don Sechler
finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.
- 1997-05-12,
Jordan Davis
finished first-level encoding
-
1997-05-14,
Natalia Smith, project editor,
finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
[Cover Image]
[Frontispiece Image]
"THIS IS THE WOMAN, AND I AM THE MAN" (page 24)
[Title Page Image]
THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH AND OTHER STORIES OF THE COLOR LINE
BY
CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLYDE O. DE LAND
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The University Press, Cambridge
1901
Page verso COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Page [i]
CONTENTS
- THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH . . . . 1
- HER VIRGINIA MAMMY . . . . 25
- THE SHERIFF 'S CHILDREN . . . . 60
- A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE . . . . 94
- CICELY'S DREAM . . . . 132
- THE PASSING OF GRANDISON . . . . 168
- UNCLE WELLINGTON'S WIVES . . . . 203
- THE BOUQUET. . . . 269
- THE WEB OF CIRCUMSTANCE . . . . 291
Page [ii]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- "THIS IS THE WOMAN, AND I AM THE MAN" (page 24) . . . . Frontispiece
- "WE 'LL BU'S' THE DO' OPEN " . . . . 76
- PERHAPS THE HOUSE HAD BEEN ROBBED . . . . 258
- "FOR WHITE PEOPLE ONLY. OTHERS PLEASE KEEP OUT" . . . .288
Page 1
THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH
I
MR. RYDER was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event.
Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The original Blue Veins were a little society of colored persons organized in a certain Northern city shortly after the war. Its purpose was to establish and maintain correct social standards among a people whose social condition presented almost unlimited room for improvement. By accident, combined perhaps with some natural affinity, the society consisted of individuals who were, generally speaking, more white than black. Some envious outsider made the suggestion that no one was eligible for membership who was not white enough to show blue veins. The suggestion was readily adopted by those who were not of the favored few,
Page 2
and since that time the society, though possessing a longer and more pretentious name, had been known far and wide as the "Blue Vein Society" and its members as the "Blue Veins."
The Blue Veins did not allow that any such requirement existed for admission to their circle, but, on the contrary, declared that character and culture were the only things considered; and that if most of their members were light-colored, it was because such persons, as a rule, had had better opportunities to qualify themselves for membership. Opinions differed, too, as to the usefulness of the society. There were those who had been known to assail it violently as a glaring example of the very prejudice from which the colored race had suffered most; and later, when such critics had succeeded in getting on the inside, they had been heard to maintain with zeal and earnestness that the society was a lifeboat, an anchor, a bulwark and a shield, - a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to guide their people through the social wilderness. Another alleged prerequisite for Blue Vein membership was that of free birth; and while there was really no such requirement, it
Page 3
is doubtless true that very few of the members would have been unable to meet it if there had been. If there were one or two of the older members who had come up from the South and from slavery, their history presented enough romantic circumstances to rob their servile origin of its grosser aspects.
While there were no such tests of eligibility, it is true that the Blue Veins had their notions on these subjects, and that not all of them were equally liberal in regard to the things they collectively disclaimed. Mr. Ryder was one of the most conservative. Though he had not been among the founders of the society, but had come in some years later, his genius for social leadership was such that he had speedily become its recognized adviser and head, the custodian of its standards, and the preserver of its traditions. He shaped its social policy, was active in providing for its entertainment, and when the interest fell off, as it sometimes did, he fanned the embers until they burst again into a cheerful flame.
There were still other reasons for his popularity. While he was not as white as some of the Blue Veins, his appearance was such
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as to confer distinction upon them. His features were of a refined type, his hair was almost straight; he was always neatly dressed; his manners were irreproachable, and his morals above suspicion. He had come to Groveland a young man, and obtaining employment in the office of a railroad company as messenger had in time worked himself up to the position of stationery clerk, having charge of the distribution of the office supplies for the whole company. Although the lack of early training had hindered the orderly development of a naturally fine mind, it had not prevented him from doing a great deal of reading or from forming decidedly literary tastes. Poetry was his passion. He could repeat whole pages of the great English poets; and if his pronunciation was sometimes faulty, his eye, his voice, his gestures, would respond to the changing sentiment with a precision that revealed a poetic soul and disarmed criticism. He was economical, and had saved money; he owned and occupied a very comfortable house on a respectable street. His residence was handsomely furnished, containing among other things a good library, especially rich in poetry, a piano, and some
Page 5
choice engravings. He generally shared his house with some young couple, who looked after his wants and were company for him; for Mr. Ryder was a single man. In the early days of his connection with the Blue Veins he had been regarded as quite a catch, and young ladies and their mothers had manoeuvred with much ingenuity to capture him. Not, however, until Mrs. Molly Dixon visited Groveland had any woman ever made him wish to change his condition to that of a married man.
Mrs. Dixon had come to Groveland from Washington in the spring, and before the summer was over she had won Mr. Ryder's heart. She possessed many attractive qualities. She was much younger than he; in fact, he was old enough to have been her father, though no one knew exactly how old he was. She was whiter than he, and better educated. She had moved in the best colored society of the country, at Washington, and had taught in the schools of that city. Such a superior person had been eagerly welcomed to the Blue Vein Society, and had taken a leading part in its activities. Mr. Ryder had at first been attracted by her charms of person,
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for she was very good looking and not over twenty-five; then by her refined manners and the vivacity of her wit. Her husband had been a government clerk, and at his death had left a considerable life insurance. She was visiting friends in Groveland, and, finding the town and the people to her liking, had prolonged her stay indefinitely. She had not seemed displeased at Mr. Ryder's attentions, but on the contrary had given him every proper encouragement; indeed, a younger and less cautious man would long since have spoken. But he had made up his mind, and had only to determine the time when he would ask her to be his wife. He decided to give a ball in her honor, and at some time during the evening of the ball to offer her his heart and hand. He had no special fears about the outcome, but, with a little touch of romance, he wanted the surroundings to be in harmony with his own feelings when he should have received the answer he expected.
Mr. Ryder resolved that this ball should mark an epoch in the social history of Groveland. He knew, of course, - no one could know better, - the entertainments that had
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taken place in past years, and what must be done to surpass them. His ball must be worthy of the lady in whose honor it was to be given, and must, by the quality of its guests, set an example for the future. He had observed of late a growing liberality, almost a laxity, in social matters, even among members of his own set, and had several times been forced to meet in a social way persons whose complexions and callings in life were hardly up to the standard which he considered proper for the society to maintain. He had a theory of his own.
"I have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one does n't want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. 'With malice towards none, with charity for all,' we must do the best we can for ourselves and those who are to follow us. Self-preservation is the first law of nature."
His ball would serve by its exclusiveness to counteract leveling tendencies, and his
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marriage with Mrs. Dixon would help to further the upward process of absorption he had been wishing and waiting for.
II
The ball was to take place on Friday night. The house had been put in order, the carpets covered with canvas, the halls and stairs decorated with palms and potted plants; and in the afternoon Mr. Ryder sat on his front porch, which the shade of a vine running up over a wire netting made a cool and pleasant lounging place. He expected to respond to the toast "The Ladies" at the supper, and from a volume of Tennyson - his favorite poet - was fortifying himself with apt quotations. The volume was open at "A Dream of Fair Women." His eyes fell on these lines, and he read them aloud to judge better of their effect: -
"At length I saw a lady within call,
Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair."
He marked the verse, and turning the page read the stanza beginning, -
"O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret."
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He weighed the passage a moment, and decided that it would not do. Mrs. Dixon was the palest lady he expected at the ball, and she was of a rather ruddy complexion, and of lively disposition and buxom build. So he ran over the leaves until his eye rested on the description of Queen Guinevere: -
"She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.
. . . . . .
"She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
As Mr. Ryder murmured these words audibly, with an appreciative thrill, he heard the latch of his gate click, and a light footfall sounding on the steps. He turned his head, and saw a woman standing before his door.
She was a little woman, not five feet tall, and proportioned to her height. Although she stood erect, and looked around her with very bright and restless eyes, she seemed
Page 10
quite old; for her face was crossed and recrossed with a hundred wrinkles, and around the edges of her bonnet could be seen protruding here and there a tuft of short gray wool. She wore a blue calico gown of ancient cut, a little red shawl fastened around her shoulders with an old-fashioned brass brooch, and a large bonnet profusely ornamented with faded red and yellow artificial flowers. And she was very black, - so black that her toothless gums, revealed when she opened her mouth to speak, were not red, but blue. She looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician's wand, as the poet's fancy had called into being the gracious shapes of which Mr. Ryder had just been reading.
He rose from his chair and came over to where she stood.
"Good-afternoon, madam," he said.
"Good-evenin', suh" she answered, ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open
Page 11
windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening were visible.
"Yes," he replied, with an air of kindly patronage, unconsciously flattered by her manner, "I am Mr. Ryder. Did you want to see me?"
"Yas, suh, ef I ain't 'sturbin' of you too much."
"Not at all. Have a seat over here behind the vine, where it is cool. What can I do for you?"
" 'Scuse me, suh," she continued, when she had sat down on the edge of a chair, " 'scuse me, suh, I 's lookin' for my husban'. I heerd you wuz a big man an' had libbed heah a long time, an' I 'lowed you would n't min' ef I'd come roun' an' ax you ef you'd ever heerd of a merlatter man by de name er Sam Taylor 'quirin' roun' in de chu'ches ermongs' de people fer his wife 'Liza Jane?"
Mr. Ryder seemed to think for a moment.
"There used to be many such cases right after the war," he said, "but it has been so long that I have forgotten them. There are very few now. But tell me your story, and it may refresh my memory."
She sat back farther in her chair so as to
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be more comfortable, and folded her withered hands in her lap.
"My name's 'Liza," she began, " 'Liza Jane. W'en I wuz young I us'ter b'long ter Marse Bob Smif, down in ole Missoura. I wuz bawn down dere. W'en I wuz a gal I wuz married ter a man named Jim. But Jim died, an' after dat I married a merlatter man named Sam Taylor. Sam wuz freebawn, but his mammy and daddy died, an' de w'ite folks 'prenticed him ter my marster fer ter work fer 'im 'tel he wuz growed up. Sam worked in de fiel', an' I wuz de cook. One day Ma'y Ann, ole miss's maid, came rushin' out ter de kitchen, an' says she, ' 'Liza Jane, ole marse gwine sell yo' Sam down de ribber.'
" 'Go way f'm yere,' says I; ' my husban' 's free! '
" 'Don' make no diff'ence. I heerd ole marse tell ole miss he wuz gwine take yo' Sam 'way wid 'im ter-morrow, fer he needed money, an' he knowed whar he could git a t'ousan' dollars fer Sam an' no questions axed.'
"W'en Sam come home f'm de fiel' dat night, I tole him 'bout ole marse gwine
Page 13
steal 'im, an' Sam run erway. His time wuz mos up, an' he swo' dat w'en he wuz twenty-one he would come back an' he'p me run erway, er else save up de money ter buy my freedom. An' I know he'd 'a' done it, fer he thought a heap er me, Sam did. But w'en he come back he did n' fin' me, fer I wuz n' dere. Ole marse had heerd dat I warned Sam, so he had me whip' an' sol' down de ribber.
"Den de wah broke out, an' w'en it wuz ober de cullud folks wuz scattered. I went back ter de ole home; but Sam wuz n' dere, an' I could n' l'arn nuffin' 'bout 'im. But I knowed he 'd be'n dere to look fer me an' had n' foun' me, an' had gone erway ter hunt fer me.
"I's be'n lookin' fer 'im eber sence," she added simply, as though twenty-five years were but a couple of weeks, "an' I knows he 's be'n lookin' fer me. Fer he sot a heap er sto' by me, Sam did, an' I know he 's be'n huntin' fer me all dese years, - 'less'n he 's be'n sick er sump'n, so he could n' work, er out'n his head, so he could n' 'member his promise. I went back down de ribber, fer I 'lowed he 'd gone down dere lookin' fer me.
Page 14
I's be'n ter Noo Orleens, an' Atlanty, an' Charleston, an' Richmon'; an' w'en I 'd be'n all ober de Souf I come ter de Norf. Fer I knows I'll fin' 'im some er dese days," she added softly, "er he'll fin' me, an' den we'll bofe be as happy in freedom as we wuz in de ole days befo' de wah." A smile stole over her withered countenance as she paused a moment, and her bright eyes softened into a faraway look.
This was the substance of the old woman's story. She had wandered a little here and there. Mr. Ryder was looking at her curiously when she finished.
"How have you lived all these years?" he asked.
"Cookin', suh. I's a good cook. Does you know anybody w'at needs a good cook, suh? I 's stoppin' wid a culled fam'ly roun' de corner yonder 'tel I kin git a place."
"Do you really expect to find your husband? He may be dead long ago."
She shook her head emphatically. "Oh no, he ain' dead. De signs an' de tokens tells me. I dremp three nights runnin' on'y dis las' week dat I foun' him."
"He may have married another woman.
Page 15
Your slave marriage would not have prevented him, for you never lived with him after the war, and without that your marriage does n't count."
"Would n' make no diff'ence wid Sam. He would n' marry no yuther 'ooman 'tel he foun' out 'bout me. I knows it," she added. " Sump'n's be'n tellin' me all dese years dat I's gwine fin' Sam 'fo' I dies."
"Perhaps he 's outgrown you, and climbed up in the world where he wouldn't care to have you find him."
"No, indeed, suh," she replied, "Sam ain' dat kin' er man. He wuz good ter me, Sam wuz, but he wuz n' much good ter nobody e'se, fer he wuz one er de triflin'es' han's on de plantation. I 'spec's ter haf ter suppo't 'im w'en I fin' 'im, fer he nebber would work 'less'n he had ter. But den he wuz free, an' he did n' git no pay fer his work, an' I don' blame 'im much. Mebbe he's done better sence he run erway, but I ain' 'spectin' much."
"You may have passed him on the street a hundred times during the twenty-five years, and not have known him; time works great changes."
She smiled incredulously. "I 'd know 'im
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'mongs' a hund'ed men. Fer dey wuz n' no yuther merlatter man like my man Sam, an' I could n' be mistook. I 's toted his picture roun' wid me twenty-five years."
"May I see it?" asked Mr. Ryder. "It might help me to remember whether I have seen the original."
As she drew a small parcel from her bosom he saw that it was fastened to a string that went around her neck. Removing several wrappers, she brought to light an old fashioned daguerreotype in a black case. He looked long and intently at the portrait. It was faded with time, but the features were still distinct, and it was easy to see what manner of man it had represented.
He closed the case, and with a slow movement handed it back to her.
"I don't know of any man in town who goes by that name," he said, "nor have I heard of any one making such inquiries. But if you will leave me your address, I will give the matter some attention, and if I find out anything I will let you know."
She gave him the number of a house in the neighborhood, and went away, after thanking him warmly.
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He wrote the address on the fly-leaf of the volume of Tennyson, and, when she had gone, rose to his feet and stood looking after her curiously. As she walked down the street with mincing step, he saw several persons whom she passed turn and look back at her with a smile of kindly amusement. When she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, gazing thoughtfully at the reflection of his own face.
III
At eight o'clock the ballroom was a blaze of light and the guests had begun to assemble; for there was a literary programme and some routine business of the society to be gone through with before the dancing. A black servant in evening dress waited at the door and directed the guests to the dressing-rooms.
The occasion was long memorable among the colored people of the city; not alone for the dress and display, but for the high average of intelligence and culture that distinguished the gathering as a whole. There
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were a number of school-teachers, several young doctors, three or four lawyers, some professional singers, an editor, a lieutenant in the United States army spending his furlough in the city, and others in various polite callings; these were colored, though most of them would not have attracted even a casual glance because of any marked difference from white people. Most of the ladies were in evening costume, and dress coats and dancing pumps were the rule among the men. A band of string music, stationed in an alcove behind a row of palms, played popular airs while the guests were gathering.
The dancing began at half past nine. At eleven o'clock supper was served. Mr. Ryder had left the ballroom some little time before the intermission, but reappeared at the supper-table. The spread was worthy of the occasion, and the guests did full justice to it. When the coffee had been served, the toastmaster, Mr. Solomon Sadler, rapped for order. He made a brief introductory speech, complimenting host and guests, and then presented in their order the toasts of the evening. They were responded to with a very fair display of after-dinner wit.
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"The last toast," said the toast-master, when he reached the end of the list, "is one which must appeal to us all. There is no one of us of the sterner sex who is not at some time dependent upon woman, - in infancy for protection, in manhood for companionship, in old age for care and comforting. Our good host has been trying to live alone, but the fair faces I see around me to-night prove that he too is largely dependent upon the gentler sex for most that makes life worth living, - the society and love of friends, - and rumor is at fault if he does not soon yield entire subjection to one of them. Mr. Ryder will now respond to the toast, - The Ladies."
There was a pensive look in Mr. Ryder's eyes as he took the floor and adjusted his eyeglasses. He began by speaking of woman as the gift of Heaven to man, and after some general observations on the relations of the sexes he said: "But perhaps the quality which most distinguishes woman is her fidelity and devotion to those she loves. History is full of examples, but has recorded none more striking than one which only to-day came under my notice."
He then related, simply but effectively, the
Page 20
story told by his visitor of the afternoon. He gave it in the same soft dialect, which came readily to his lips, while the company listened attentively and sympathetically. For the story had awakened a responsive thrill in many hearts. There were some present who had seen, and others who had heard their fathers and grandfathers tell, the wrongs and sufferings of this past generation, and all of them still felt, in their darker moments, the shadow hanging over them. Mr. Ryder went on: -
"Such devotion and confidence are rare even among women. There are many who would have searched a year, some who would have waited five years, a few who might have hoped ten years; but for twenty-five years this woman has retained her affection for and her faith in a man she has not seen or heard of in all that time.
"She came to me to-day in the hope that I might be able to help her find this long-lost husband. And when she was gone I gave my fancy rein, and imagined a case I will put to you.
"Suppose that this husband, soon after his escape, had learned that his wife had been
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sold away, and that such inquiries as he could make brought no information of her whereabouts. Suppose that he was young, and she much older than he; that he was light, and she was black; that their marriage was a slave marriage, and legally binding only if they chose to make it so after the war. Suppose, too, that he made his way to the North as some of us have done, and there, where he had larger opportunities, had improved them, and had in the course of all these years grown to be as different from the ignorant boy who ran away from fear of slavery as the day is from the night. Suppose, even, that he had qualified himself, by industry, by thrift, and by study, to win the friendship and be considered worthy the society of such people as these I see around me to-night, gracing my board and filling my heart with gladness; for I am old enough to remember the day when such a gathering would not have been possible in this land. Suppose, too, that, as the years went by, this man's memory of the past grew more and more indistinct, until at last it was rarely, except in his dreams, that any image of this bygone period rose before his mind. And then suppose that accident
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should bring to his knowledge the fact that the wife of his youth, the wife he had left behind him, - not one who had walked by his side and kept pace with him in his upward struggle, but one upon whom advancing years and a laborious life had set their mark, - was alive and seeking him, but that he was absolutely safe from recognition or discovery, unless he chose to reveal himself. My friends, what would the man do? I will presume that he was one who loved honor, and tried to deal justly with all men. I will even carry the case further, and suppose that perhaps he had set his heart upon another, whom he had hoped to call his own. What would he do, or rather what ought he to do, in such a crisis of a lifetime?
"It seemed to me that he might hesitate, and I imagined that I was an old friend, a near friend, and that he had come to me for advice; and I argued the case with him. I tried to discuss it impartially. After we had looked upon the matter from every point of view, I said to him, in words that we all know: -
'This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
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Then, finally, I put the question to him, 'Shall you acknowledge her?'
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, friends and companions, I ask you, what should he have done?"
There was something in Mr. Ryder's voice that stirred the hearts of those who sat around him. It suggested more than mere sympathy with an imaginary situation; it seemed rather in the nature of a personal appeal. It was observed, too, that his look rested more especially upon Mrs. Dixon, with a mingled expression of renunciation and inquiry.
She had listened, with parted lips and streaming eyes. She was the first to speak: "He should have acknowledged her."
"Yes," they all echoed, "he should have acknowledged her."
"My friends and companions," responded Mr. Ryder, "I thank you, one and all. It is the answer I expected, for I knew your hearts."
He turned and walked toward the closed door of an adjoining room, while every eye followed him in wondering curiosity. He came back in a moment, leading by the hand his visitor of the afternoon, who stood startled
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and trembling at the sudden plunge into this scene of brilliant gayety. She was neatly dressed in gray, and wore the white cap of an elderly woman.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this is the woman, and I am the man, whose story I have told you. Permit me to introduce to you the wife of my youth."
Page 25
HER VIRGINIA MAMMY
I
THE pianist had struck up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems. The dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights from the chandeliers. The walls were hung in paper of blue and white, above a varnished hard wood wainscoting; the monotony of surface being broken by numerous windows draped with curtains of dotted muslin, and by occasional engravings and colored pictures representing the dances of various nations, judiciously selected. The rows of chairs along the two sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a muscular wrist, played
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with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the listeners involuntarily in motion.
The dance was sure to occupy the class for a quarter of an hour at least, and the little dancing-mistress took the opportunity to slip away to her own sitting-room, which was on the same floor of the block, for a few minutes of rest. Her day had been a hard one. There had been a matinee at two o'clock, a children's class at four, and at eight o'clock the class now on the floor had assembled.
When she reached the sitting-room she gave a start of pleasure. A young man rose at her entrance, and advanced with both hands extended - a tall, broad-shouldered, fair-haired young man, with a frank and kindly countenance, now lit up with the animation of pleasure. He seemed about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. His face was of the type one instinctively associates with intellect and character, and it gave the impression, besides, of that intangible something which we call race. He was neatly and carefully dressed, though his clothing was not without indications that he found it necessary or expedient to practice economy.
"Good-evening, Clara," he said, taking her
Page 27
hands in his; "I've been waiting for you five minutes. I supposed you would be in, but if you had been a moment later I was going to the hall to look you up. You seem tired tonight," he added, drawing her nearer to him and scanning her features at short range. "This work is too hard; you are not fitted for it. When are you going to give it up?"
"The season is almost over," she answered, "and then I shall stop for the summer."
He drew her closer still and kissed her lovingly. "Tell me, Clara," he said, looking down into her face, - he was at least a foot taller than she, - "when I am to have my answer."
"Will you take the answer you can get tonight?" she asked with a wan smile.
"I will take but one answer, Clara. But do not make me wait too long for that. Why, just think of it! I have known you for six months."
"That is an extremely long time," said Clara, as they sat down side by side.
"It has been an age," he rejoined. "For a fortnight of it, too, which seems longer than all the rest, I have been waiting for my answer. I am turning gray under the suspense.
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Seriously, Clara dear, what shall it be? Or rather, when shall it be? for to the other question there is but one answer possible."
He looked into her eyes, which slowly filled with tears. She repulsed him gently as he bent over to kiss them away.
"You know I love you, John, and why I do not say what you wish. You must give me a little more time to make up my mind before I can consent to burden you with a nameless wife, one who does not know who her mother was" -
"She was a good woman, and beautiful, if you are at all like her."
"Or her father" -
"He was a gentleman and a scholar, if you inherited from him your mind or your manners."
"It is good of you to say that, and I try to believe it. But it is a serious matter; it is a dreadful thing to have no name."
"You are known by a worthy one, which was freely given you, and is legally yours."
"I know - and I am grateful for it. After all, though, it is not my real name; and since I have learned that it was not, it seems like a garment - something external, accessory, and
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not a part of myself. It does not mean what one's own name would signify."
"Take mine, Clara, and make it yours; I lay it at your feet. Some honored men have borne it."
"Ah yes, and that is what makes my position the harder. Your great-grandfather was governor of Connecticut."
"I have heard my mother say so."
"And one of your ancestors came over in the Mayflower."
"In some capacity - I have never been quite clear whether as ship's cook or before the mast."
"Now you are insincere, John; but you cannot deceive me. You never spoke in that way about your ancestors until you learned that I had none. I know you are proud of them, and that the memory of the governor and the judge and the Harvard professor and the Mayflower pilgrim makes you strive to excel, in order to prove yourself worthy of them."
"It did until I met you, Clara. Now the one inspiration of my life is the hope to make you mine."
"And your profession?"
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"It will furnish me the means to take you out of this; you are not fit for toil."
"And your book - your treatise that is to make you famous?"
"I have worked twice as hard on it and accomplished twice as much since I have hoped that you might share my success."
"Oh! if I but knew the truth!" she sighed, "or could find it out! I realize that I am absurd, that I ought to be happy. I love my parents - my foster-parents - dearly. I owe them everything. Mother - poor, dear mother! - could not have loved me better or cared for me more faithfully had I been her own child. Yet - I am ashamed to say it - I always felt that I was not like them, that there was a subtle difference between us. They were contented in prosperity, resigned in misfortune; I was ever restless, and filled with vague ambitions. They were good, but dull. They loved me, but they never said so. I feel that there is warmer, richer blood coursing in my veins than the placid stream that crept through theirs."
"There will never be any such people to me as they were," said her lover, "for they took you and brought you up for me."
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"Sometimes," she went on dreamily, "I feel sure that I am of good family, and the blood of my ancestors seems to call to me in clear and certain tones. Then again when my mood changes, I am all at sea - I feel that even if I had but simply to turn my hand to learn who I am and whence I came, I should shrink from taking the step, for fear that what I might learn would leave me forever unhappy."
"Dearest," he said, taking her in his arms, while from the hall and down the corridor came the softened strains of music, "put aside these unwholesome fancies. Your past is shrouded in mystery. Take my name, as you have taken my love, and I'll make your future so happy that you won't have time to think of the past. What are a lot of musty, mouldy old grandfathers, compared with life and love and happiness? It's hardly good form to mention one's ancestors nowadays, and what 's the use of them at all if one can't boast of them?"
"It's all very well of you to talk that way," she rejoined. "But suppose you should marry me, and when you become famous and rich, and patients flock to your office, and
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fashionable people to your home, and every one wants to know who you are and whence you came, you'll be obliged to bring out the governor, and the judge, and the rest of them. If you should refrain, in order to forestall embarrassing inquiries about my ancestry, I should have deprived you of something you are entitled to, something which has a real social value. And when people found out all about you, as they eventually would from some source, they would want to know - we Americans are a curious people - who your wife was, and you could only say" -
"The best and sweetest woman on earth, whom I love unspeakably."
"You know that is not what I mean. You could only say - a Miss Nobody, from Nowhere."
"A Miss Hohlfelder, from Cincinnati, the only child of worthy German parents, who fled from their own country in '49 to escape political persecution - an ancestry that one surely need not be ashamed of."
"No; but the consciousness that it was not true would be always with me, poisoning my mind, and darkening my life and yours."
"Your views of life are entirely too tragic,
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Clara," the young man argued soothingly. "We are all worms of the dust, and if we go back far enough, each of us has had millions of ancestors; peasants and serfs, most of them; thieves, murderers, and vagabonds, many of them, no doubt; and therefore the best of us have but little to boast of. Yet we are all made after God's own image, and formed by his hand, for his ends; and therefore not to be lightly despised, even the humblest of us least of all by ourselves. For the past we can claim no credit, for those who made it died with it. Our destiny lies in the future."
"Yes," she sighed, "I know all that. But I am not like you. A woman is not like a man; she cannot lose herself in theories and generalizations. And there are tests that even all your philosophy could not endure. Suppose you should marry me, and then some time, by the merest accident, you should learn that my origin was the worst it could be - that I not only had no name, but was not entitled to one."
"I cannot believe it," he said, "and from what we do know of your history it is hardly possible. If I learned it, I should forget it, unless, perchance, it should enhance your
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value in my eyes, by stamping you as a rare work of nature, an exception to the law of heredity, a triumph of pure beauty and goodness over the grosser limitations of matter. I cannot imagine, now that I know you, anything that could make me love you less. I would marry you just the same - even if you were one of your dancing-class to-night."
"I must go back to them," said Clara, as the music ceased.
"My answer," he urged, "give me my answer!"
"Not to-night, John," she pleaded. "Grant me a little longer time to make up my mind - for your sake."
"Not for my sake, Clara, no."
"Well - for mine." She let him take her in his arms and kiss her again.
"I have a patient yet to see to-night," he said as he went out. "If I am not detained too long, I may come back this way - if I see the lights in the hall still burning. Do not wonder if I ask you again for my answer, for I shall be unhappy until I get it."
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II
A stranger entering the hall with Miss Hohlfelder would have seen, at first glance, only a company of well-dressed people, with nothing to specially distinguish them from ordinary humanity in temperate climates. After the eye had rested for a moment and begun to separate the mass into its component parts, one or two dark faces would have arrested its attention; and with the suggestion thus offered, a closer inspection would have revealed that they were nearly all a little less than white. With most of them this fact would not have been noticed, while they were alone or in company with one another, though if a fair white person had gone among them it would perhaps have been more apparent. From the few who were undistinguishable from pure white, the colors ran down the scale by minute gradations to the two or three brown faces at the other extremity.
It was Miss Hohlfelder's first colored class. She had been somewhat startled when first asked to take it. No person of color had ever applied to her for lessons; and while a woman
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of that race had played the piano for her for several months, she had never thought of colored people as possible pupils. So when she was asked if she would take a class of twenty or thirty, she had hesitated, and begged for time to consider the application. She knew that several of the more fashionable dancing-schools tabooed all pupils, singly or in classes, who labored under social disabilities - and this included the people of at least one other race who were vastly farther along in the world than the colored people of the community where Miss Hohlfelder lived. Personally she had no such prejudice, except perhaps a little shrinking at the thought of personal contact with the dark faces of whom Americans always think when "colored people" are spoken of. Again, a class of forty pupils was not to be despised, for she taught for money, which was equally current and desirable, regardless of its color. She had consulted her foster-parents, and after them her lover. Her foster-parents, who were German-born, and had never become thoroughly Americanized, saw no objection. As for her lover, he was indifferent.
"Do as you please," he said. " It may
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drive away some other pupils. If it should break up the business entirely, perhaps you might be willing to give me a chance so much the sooner."
She mentioned the matter to one or two other friends, who expressed conflicting opinions. She decided at length to take the class, and take the consequences.
"I don't think it would be either right or kind to refuse them for any such reason, and I don't believe I shall lose anything by it."
She was somewhat surprised, and pleasantly so, when her class came together for their first lesson, at not finding them darker and more uncouth. Her pupils were mostly people whom she would have passed on the street without a second glance, and among them were several whom she had known by sight for years, but had never dreamed of as being colored people. Their manners were good, they dressed quietly and as a rule with good taste, avoiding rather than choosing bright colors and striking combinations - whether from natural preference, or because of a slightly morbid shrinking from criticism, of course she could not say. Among them, the dancing-mistress soon learned, there were lawyers
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and doctors, teachers, telegraph operators, clerks, milliners and dressmakers, students of the local college and scientific school, and, somewhat to her awe at the first meeting, even a member of the legislature. They were mostly young, although a few light-hearted older people joined the class, as much for company as for the dancing.
" Of course, Miss Hohlfelder," explained Mr. Solomon Sadler, to whom the teacher had paid a compliment on the quality of the class, "the more advanced of us are not numerous enough to make the fine distinctions that are possible among white people; and of course as we rise in life we can't get entirely away from our brothers and our sisters and our cousins, who don't always keep abreast of us. We do, however, draw certain lines of character and manners and occupation. You see the sort of people we are. Of course we have no prejudice against color, and we regard all labor as honorable, provided a man does the best he can. But we must have standards that will give our people something to aspire to."
The class was not a difficult one, as many of the members were already fairly good
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dancers. Indeed the class had been formed as much for pleasure as for instruction. Music and hall rent and a knowledge of the latest dances could be obtained cheaper in this way than in any other. The pupils had made rapid progress, displaying in fact a natural aptitude for rhythmic motion, and a keen susceptibility to musical sounds. As their race had never been criticised for these characteristics, they gave them full play, and soon developed, most of them, into graceful and indefatigable dancers. They were now almost at the end of their course, and this was the evening of the last lesson but one.
Miss Hohlfelder had remarked to her lover more than once that it was a pleasure to teach them. "They enter into the spirit of it so thoroughly, and they seem to enjoy themselves so much."
"One would think," he suggested, "that the whitest of them would find their position painful and more or less pathetic; to be so white and yet to be classed as black - so near and yet so far."
"They don't accept our classification blindly. They do not acknowledge any inferiority; they think they are a great deal
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better than any but the best white people," replied Miss Hohlfelder. "And since they have been coming here, do you know," she went on, "I hardly think of them as any different from other people. I feel perfectly at home among them."
"It is a great thing to have faith in one's self," he replied. "It is a fine thing, too, to be able to enjoy the passing moment. One of your greatest charms in my eyes, Clara, is that in your lighter moods you have this faculty. You sing because you love to sing. You find pleasure in dancing, even by way of work. You feel the joi de vivre - the joy of living. You are not always so, but when you are so I think you most delightful."
Miss Hohlfelder, upon entering the hall, spoke to the pianist and then exchanged a few words with various members of the class. The pianist began to play a dreamy Strauss waltz. When the dance was well under way Miss Hohlfelder left the hall again and stepped into the ladies' dressing-room. There was a woman seated quietly on a couch in a corner, her hands folded on her lap.
"Good-evening, Miss Hohlfelder. You do not seem as bright as usual to-night."
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Miss Hohlfelder felt a sudden yearning for sympathy. Perhaps it was the gentle tones of the greeting; perhaps the kindly expression of the soft though faded eyes that were scanning Miss Hohlfelder's features. The woman was of the indefinite age between forty and fifty. There were lines on her face which, if due to years, might have carried her even past the half-century mark, but if caused by trouble or ill health might leave her somewhat below it. She was quietly dressed in black, and wore her slightly wavy hair low over her ears, where it lay naturally in the ripples which some others of her sex so sedulously seek by art. A little woman, of clear olive complexion and regular features, her face was almost a perfect oval, except as time had marred its outline. She had been in the habit of coming to the class with some young women of the family she lived with, part boarder, part seamstress and friend of the family. Sometimes, while waiting for her young charges, the music would jar her nerves, and she would seek the comparative quiet of the dressing-room.
"Oh, I 'm all right, Mrs. Harper," replied the dancing-mistress, with a brave attempt at
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cheerfulness, - "just a little tired, after a hard day's work."
She sat down on the couch by the elder woman's side. Mrs. Harper took her hand and stroked it gently, and Clara felt soothed and quieted by her touch.
"There are tears in your eyes and trouble in your face. I know it, for I have shed the one and known the other. Tell me, child, what ails you? I am older than you, and perhaps I have learned some things in the hard school of life that may be of comfort or service to you."
Such a request, coming from a comparative stranger, might very properly have been resented or lightly parried. But Clara was not what would be called self-contained. Her griefs seemed lighter when they were shared with others, even in spirit. There was in her nature a childish strain that craved sympathy and comforting. She had never known - or if so it was only in a dim and dreamlike past - the tender, brooding care that was her conception of a mother's love. Mrs. Hohlfelder had been fond of her in a placid way, and had given her every comfort and luxury her means permitted. Clara' s
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ideal of maternal love had been of another and more romantic type; she had thought of a fond, impulsive mother, to whose bosom she could fly when in trouble or distress, and to whom she could communicate her sorrows and trials; who would dry her tears and soothe her with caresses. Now, when even her kind foster-mother was gone, she felt still more the need of sympathy and companionship with her own sex; and when this little Mrs. Harper spoke to her so gently, she felt her heart respond instinctively.
"Yes, Mrs. Harper," replied Clara with a sigh, "I am in trouble, but it is trouble that you nor any one else can heal."
"You do not know, child. A simple remedy can sometimes cure a very grave complaint. Tell me your trouble, if it is something you are at liberty to tell."
"I have a story," said Clara, "and it is a strange one, - a story I have told to but one other person, one very dear to me."
"He must be dear to you indeed, from the tone in which you speak of him. Your very accents breathe love."
"Yes, I love him, and if you saw him - perhaps you have seen him, for he has looked
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in here once or twice during the dancing-lessons - you would know why I love him. He is handsome, he is learned, he is ambitious, he is brave, he is good; he is poor, but he will not always be so; and he loves me, oh, so much!"
The other woman smiled. "It is not so strange to love, nor yet to be loved. And all lovers are handsome and brave and fond."
"That is not all of my story. He wants to marry me." Clara paused, as if to let this statement impress itself upon the other.
"True lovers always do," said the elder woman.
"But sometimes, you know, there are circumstances which prevent them."
"Ah yes," murmured the other reflectively, and looking at the girl with deeper interest, "circumstances which prevent them. I have known of such a case."
"The circumstance which prevents us from marrying is my story."
"Tell me your story, child, and perhaps, if I cannot help you otherwise, I can tell you one that will make yours seem less sad."
"You know me," said the young woman, "as Miss Hohlfelder; but that is not actually
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my name. In fact I do not know my real name, for I am not the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Hohlfelder, but only an adopted child. While Mrs. Hohlfelder lived, I never knew that I was not her child. I knew I was very different from her and father, - I mean Mr. Hohlfelder. I knew they were fair and I was dark; they were stout and I was slender; they were slow and I was quick. But of course I never dreamed of the true reason of this difference. When mother - Mrs. Hohlfelder - died, I found among her things one day a little packet, carefully wrapped up, containing a child's slip and some trinkets. The paper wrapper of the packet bore an inscription that awakened my curiosity. I asked father Hohlfelder whose the things had been, and then for the first time I learned my real story.
"I was not their own daughter, he stated, but an adopted child. Twenty-three years ago, when he had lived in St. Louis, a steamboat explosion had occurred up the river, and on a piece of wreckage floating down stream, a girl baby had been found. There was nothing on the child to give a hint of its home or parentage; and no one came to claim
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it, though the fact that a child had been found was advertised all along the river. It was believed that the infant's parents must have perished in the wreck, and certainly no one of those who were saved could identify the child. There had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident. The child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless German people who brought it up as their own. I was that child."
The woman seated by Clara's side had listened with strained attention. "Did you learn the name of the steamboat?" she asked quietly, but quickly, when Clara paused.
"The Pride of St. Louis," answered Clara. She did not look at Mrs. Harper, but was gazing dreamily toward the front, and therefore did not see the expression that sprang into the other's face, - a look in which hope struggled with fear, and yearning love with both - nor the strong effort with which Mrs. Harper controlled herself and moved not one muscle while the other went on.
"I was never sought," Clara continued,
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"and the good people who brought me up gave me every care. Father and mother - I can never train my tongue to call them anything else - were very good to me. When they adopted me they were poor; he was a pharmacist with a small shop. Later on he moved to Cincinnati, where he made and sold a popular'patent' medicine and amassed a fortune. Then I went to a fashionable school, was taught French, and deportment, and dancing. Father Hohlfelder made some bad investments, and lost most of his money. The patent medicine fell off in popularity. A year or two ago we came to this city to live. Father bought this block and opened the little drug store below. We moved into the rooms upstairs. The business was poor, and I felt that I ought to do something to earn money and help support the family. I could dance; we had this hall, and it was not rented all the time, so I opened a dancing-school."
"Tell me, child," said the other woman, with restrained eagerness, "what were the things found upon you when you were taken from the river?"
"Yes," answered the girl, "I will. But I have not told you all my story, for this is but
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the prelude. About a year ago a young doctor rented an office in our block. We met each other, at first only now and then, and afterwards oftener; and six months ago he told me that he loved me."
She paused, and sat with half opened lips and dreamy eyes, looking back into the past six months.
"And the things found upon you" -
"Yes, I will show them to you when you have heard all my story. He wanted to marry me, and has asked me every week since. I have told him that I love him, but I have not said I would marry him. I don't think it would be right for me to do so, unless I could clear up this mystery. I believe he is going to be great and rich and famous, and there might come a time when he would be ashamed of me. I don't say that I shall never marry him; for I have hoped - I have a presentiment that in some strange way I shall find out who I am, and who my parents were. It may be mere imagination on my part, but somehow I believe it is more than that."
"Are you sure there was no mark on the things that were found upon you?" said the elder woman.
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"Ah yes," sighed Clara, "I am sure, for I have looked at them a hundred times. They tell me nothing, and yet they suggest to me many things. Come," she said, taking the other by the hand, "and I will show them to you."
She led the way along the hall to her sitting-room, and to her bedchamber beyond. It was a small room hung with paper showing a pattern of morning-glories on a light ground, with dotted muslin curtains, a white iron bedstead, a few prints on the wall, a rocking-chair - a very dainty room. She went to the maple dressing-case, and opened one of the drawers.
As they stood for a moment, the mirror reflecting and framing their image, more than one point of resemblance between them was emphasized. There was something of the same oval face, and in Clara's hair a faint suggestion of the wave in the older woman's; and though Clara was fairer of complexion, and her eyes were gray and the other's black, there was visible, under the influence of the momentary excitement, one of those indefinable likenesses which are at times encountered, - sometimes marking blood
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relationship, sometimes the impress of a common training; in one case perhaps a mere earmark of temperament, and in another the index of a type. Except for the difference in color, one might imagine that if the younger woman were twenty years older the resemblance would be still more apparent.
Clara reached her hand into the drawer and drew out a folded packet, which she unwrapped, Mrs. Harper following her movements meanwhile with a suppressed intensity of interest which Clara, had she not been absorbed in her own thoughts, could not have failed to observe.
When the last fold of paper was removed there lay revealed a child's muslin slip. Clara lifted it and shook it gently until it was unfolded before their eyes. The lower half was delicately worked in a lacelike pattern, revealing an immense amount of patient labor.
The elder woman seized the slip with hands which could not disguise their trembling. Scanning the garment carefully, she seemed to be noting the pattern of the needlework, and then, pointing to a certain spot, exclaimed: -
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"I thought so! I was sure of it! Do you not see the letters - M. S.?"
"Oh, how wonderful!" Clara seized the slip in turn and scanned the monogram. "How strange that you should see that at once and that I should not have discovered it, who have looked at it a hundred times! And here," she added, opening a small package which had been inclosed in the other, "is my coral necklace. Perhaps your keen eyes can find something in that."
It was a simple trinket, at which the older woman gave but a glance - a glance that added to her emotion.
"Listen, child," she said, laying her trembling hand on the other's arm. "It is all very strange and wonderful, for that slip and necklace, and, now that I have seen them, your face and your voice and your ways, all tell me who you are. Your eyes are your father's eyes, your voice is your father's voice. The slip was worked by your mother's hand."
"Oh!" cried Clara, and for a moment the whole world swam before her eyes.
" I was on the Pride of St. Louis, and I knew your father - and your mother."
Clara, pale with excitement, burst into tears,
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and would have fallen had not the other woman caught her in her arms. Mrs. Harper placed her on the couch, and, seated by her side, supported her head on her shoulder. Her hands seemed to caress the young woman with every touch.
"Tell me, oh, tell me all!" Clara demanded, when the first wave of emotion had subsided. "Who were my father and my mother, and who am I?"
The elder woman restrained her emotion with an effort, and answered as composedly as she could, -
"There were several hundred passengers on the Pride of St. Louis when she left Cincinnati on that fateful day, on her regular trip to New Orleans. Your father and mother were on the boat - and I was on the boat. We were going down the river, to take ship at New Orleans for France, a country which your father loved."
"Who was my father?" asked Clara. The woman's words fell upon her ear like water on a thirsty soil.
"Your father was a Virginia gentleman, and belonged to one of the first families, the Staffords, of Melton County."
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Clara drew herself up unconsciously, and into her face there came a frank expression of pride which became it wonderfully, setting off a beauty that needed only this to make it all but perfect of its type.
"I knew it must be so," she murmured. "I have often felt it. Blood will always tell. And my mother?"
"Your mother - also belonged to one of the first families of Virginia, and in her veins flowed some of the best blood of the Old Dominion."
"What was her maiden name?"
"Mary Fairfax. As I was saying, your father was a Virginia gentleman. He was as handsome a man as ever lived, and proud, oh, so proud! - and good, and kind. He was a graduate of the University and had studied abroad."
"My mother - was she beautiful?"
"She was much admired, and your father loved her from the moment he first saw her. Your father came back from Europe, upon his father's sudden death, and entered upon his inheritance. But he had been away from Virginia so long, and had read so many books, that he had outgrown his home. He did not
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believe that slavery was right, and one of the first things he did was to free his slaves. His views were not popular, and he sold out his lands a year before the war, with the intention of moving to Europe."
"In the mean time he had met and loved and married my mother?"
"In the mean time he had met and loved your mother."
"My mother was a Virginia belle, was she not?"
"The Fairfaxes," answered Mrs. Harper, "were the first of the first families, the bluest of the blue-bloods. The Miss Fairfaxes were all beautiful and all social favorites."
"What did my father do then, when he had sold out in Virginia?"
"He went with your mother and you - you were then just a year old - to Cincinnati, to settle up some business connected with his estate. When he had completed his business, he embarked on the Pride of St. Louis with you and your mother and a colored nurse."
"And how did you know about them?" asked Clara.
"I was one of the party. I was" -
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"You were the colored nurse? - my 'mammy,' they would have called you in my old Virginia home?"
"Yes, child, I was - your mammy. Upon my bosom you have rested; my breasts once gave you nourishment; my hands once ministered to you; my arms sheltered you, and my heart loved you and mourned you like a mother loves and mourns her firstborn."
"Oh, how strange, how delightful!" exclaimed Clara. "Now I understand why you clasped me so tightly, and were so agitated when I told you my story. It is too good for me to believe. I am of good blood, of an old and aristocratic family. My presentiment has come true. I can marry my lover, and I shall owe all my happiness to you. How can I ever repay you?"
"You can kiss me, child, kiss your mammy."
Their lips met, and they were clasped in each other's arms. One put into the embrace all of her new-found joy, the other all the suppressed feeling of the last half hour, which in turn embodied the unsatisfied yearning of many years.
The music had ceased and the pupils had
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left the hall. Mrs. Harper's charges had supposed her gone, and had left for home without her. But the two women, sitting in Clara's chamber, hand in hand, were oblivious to external things and noticed neither the hour nor the cessation of the music.
"Why, dear mammy," said the young woman musingly, "did you not find me, and restore me to my people?"
"Alas, child! I was not white, and when I was picked up from the water, after floating miles down the river, the man who found me kept me prisoner for a time, and, there being no inquiry for me, pretended not to believe that I was free, and took me down to New Orleans and sold me as a slave. A few years later the war set me free. I went to St. Louis but could find no trace of you. I had hardly dared to hope that a child had been saved, when so many grown men and women had lost their lives. I made such inquiries as I could, but all in vain."
"Did you go to the orphan asylum?"
"The orphan asylum had been burned and with it all the records. The war had scattered the people so that I could find no one who knew about a lost child saved from a river
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wreck. There were many orphans in those days, and one more or less was not likely to dwell in the public mind."
"Did you tell my people in Virginia?"
"They, too, were scattered by the war. Your uncles lost their lives on the battlefield. The family mansion was burned to the ground. Your father's remaining relatives were reduced to poverty, and moved away from Virginia."
"What of my mother's people?"
"They are all dead. God punished them. They did not love your father, and did not wish him to marry your mother. They helped to drive him to his death."
"I am alone in the world, then, without kith or kin," murmured Clara, "and yet, strange to say, I am happy. If I had known my people and lost them, I should be sad. They are gone, but they have left me their name and their blood. I would weep for my poor father and mother if I were not so glad."
Just then some one struck a chord upon the piano in the hall, and the sudden breaking of the stillness recalled Clara's attention to the lateness of the hour.
"I had forgotten about the class," she exclaimed. "I must go and attend to them."
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They walked along the corridor and entered the hall. Dr. Winthrop was seated at the piano, drumming idly on the keys.
"I did not know where you had gone," he said. "I knew you would be around, of course, since the lights were not out, and so I came in here to wait for you."
"Listen, John, I have a wonderful story to tell you."
Then she told him Mrs. Harper's story. He listened attentively and sympathetically, at certain points taking his eyes from Clara's face and glancing keenly at Mrs. Harper, who was listening intently. As he looked from one to the other he noticed the resemblance between them, and something in his expression caused Mrs. Harper's eyes to fall, and then glance up appealingly.
"And now," said Clara, "I am happy. I know my name. I am a Virginia Stafford. I belong to one, yes, to two of what were the first families of Virginia. John, my family is as good as yours. If I remember my history correctly, the Cavaliers looked down upon the Roundheads."
"I admit my inferiority," he replied. "If you are happy I am glad."
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"Clara Stafford," mused the girl. "It is a pretty name."
"You will never have to use it," her lover declared, "for now you will take mine."
"Then I shall have nothing left of all that I have found" -
"Except your husband," asserted Dr. Winthrop, putting his arm around her, with an air of assured possession.
Mrs. Harper was looking at them with moistened eyes in which joy and sorrow, love and gratitude, were strangely blended. Clara put out her hand to her impulsively.
"And my mammy," she cried, "my dear Virginia mammy."
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THE SHERIFF'S CHILDREN
BRANSON COUNTY, North Carolina, is in a sequestered district of one of the staidest and most conservative States of the Union. Society in Branson County is almost primitive in its simplicity. Most of the white people own the farms they till, and even before the war there were no very wealthy families to force their neighbors, by comparison, into the category of "poor whites."
To Branson County, as to most rural communities in the South, the war is the one historical event that overshadows all others. It is the era from which all local chronicles are dated, - births, deaths, marriages, storms, freshets. No description of the life of any Southern community would be perfect that failed to emphasize the all pervading influence of the great conflict.
Yet the fierce tide of war that had rushed through the cities and along the great highways of the country had comparatively
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speaking but slightly disturbed the sluggish current of life in this region, remote from railroads and navigable streams. To the north in Virginia, to the west in Tennessee, and all along the seaboard the war had raged; but the thunder of its cannon had not disturbed the echoes of Branson County, where the loudest sounds heard were the crack of some hunter's rifle, the baying of some deep-mouthed hound, or the yodel of some tuneful negro on his way through the pine forest. To the east, Sherman's army had passed on its march to the sea; but no straggling band of "bummers" had penetrated the confines of Branson County. The war, it is true, had robbed the county of the flower of its young manhood; but the burden of taxation, the doubt and uncertainty of the conflict, and the sting of ultimate defeat, had been borne by the people with an apathy that robbed misfortune of half its sharpness.
The nearest approach to town life afforded by Branson County is found in the little village of Troy, the county seat, a hamlet with a population of four or five hundred.
Ten years make little difference in the appearance of these remote Southern towns.
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If a railroad is built through one of them, it infuses some enterprise; the social corpse is galvanized by the fresh blood of civilization that pulses along the farthest ramifications of our great system of commercial highways. At the period of which I write, no railroad had come to Troy. If a traveler, accustomed to the bustling life of cities, could have ridden through Troy on a summer day, he might easily have fancied himself in a deserted village. Around him he would have seen weather-beaten houses, innocent of paint, the shingled roofs in many instances covered with a rich growth of moss. Here and there he would have met a razor-backed hog lazily rooting his way along the principal thoroughfare; and more than once be would probably have had to disturb the slumbers of some yellow dog, dozing away the hours in the ardent sunshine, and reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of the dusty road.
On Saturdays the village presented a somewhat livelier appearance, and the shade trees around the court house square and along Front Street served as hitching-posts for a goodly number of horses and mules and stunted oxen, belonging to the farmer-folk
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who had come in to trade at the two or three local stores.
A murder was a rare event in Branson County. Every well-informed citizen could tell the number of homicides committed in the county for fifty years back, and whether the slayer, in any given instance, had escaped either by flight or acquittal, or had suffered the penalty of the law. So, when it became known in Troy early one Friday morning in summer, about ten years after the war, that old Captain Walker, who had served in Mexico under Scott, and had left an arm on the field of Gettysburg, had been foully murdered during the night, there was intense excitement in the village. Business was practically suspended, and the citizens gathered in little groups to discuss the murder, and speculate upon the identity of the murderer. It transpired from testimony at the coroner's inquest, held during the morning, that a strange mulatto had been seen going in the direction of Captain Walker's house the night before, and had been met going away from Troy early Friday morning, by a farmer on his way to town. Other circumstances seemed to connect the stranger with the crime. The sheriff
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organized a posse to search for him, and early in the evening, when most of the citizens of Troy were at supper, the suspected man was brought in and lodged in the county jail.
By the following morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday, - bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them a meagre sustenance.
The murder was almost the sole topic of conversation. A steady stream of curious observers visited the house of mourning, and gazed upon the rugged face of the old veteran, now stiff and cold in death; and more than one eye dropped a tear at the remembrance of the cheery smile, and the joke - sometimes superannuated, generally feeble, but always good-natured - with which the captain had been wont to greet his acquaintances. There was a growing sentiment of anger among these stern men, toward the murderer who
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had thus cut down their friend, and a strong feeling that ordinary justice was too slight a punishment for such a crime.
Toward noon there was an informal gathering of citizens in Dan Tyson's store.
"I hear it 'lowed that Square Kyahtah's too sick ter hol' co'te this evenin'," said one, "an' that the purlim'nary hearin' 'll haf ter go over 'tel nex' week."
A look of disappointment went round the crowd.
"Hit 's the durndes', meanes' murder ever committed in this caounty," said another, with moody emphasis.
"I s'pose the nigger 'lowed the Cap'n had some greenbacks," observed a third speaker.
"The Cap'n," said another, with an air of superior information, "has left two bairls of Confedrit money, which he 'spected 'ud be good some day er nuther."
This statement gave rise to a discussion of the speculative value of Confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned to the murder.
"Hangin' air too good fer the murderer," said one; "he oughter be burnt, stidier bein' hung."
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There was an impressive pause at this point, during which a jug of moonlight whiskey went the round of the crowd.
"Well," said a round-shouldered farmer, who, in spite of his peaceable expression and faded gray eye, was known to have been one of the most daring followers of a rebel guerrilla chieftain, "what air yer gwine ter do about it? Ef you fellers air gwine ter set down an' let a wuthless nigger kill the bes' white man in Branson, an' not say nuthin' ner do nuthin', I 'll move outen the caounty."
This speech gave tone and direction to the rest of the conversation. Whether the fear of losing the round-shouldered farmer operated to bring about the result or not is immaterial to this narrative; but, at all events, the crowd decided to lynch the negro. They agreed that this was the least that could be done to avenge the death of their murdered friend, and that it was a becoming way in which to honor his memory. They had some vague notions of the majesty of the law and the rights of the citizen, but in the passion of the moment these sunk into oblivion; a white man had been killed by a negro.
"The Cap'n was an ole sodger," said one
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of his friends solemnly. "He 'll sleep better when he knows that a co'te-martial has be'n hilt an' jestice done."
By agreement the lynchers were to meet at Tyson's store at five o'clock in the afternoon, and proceed thence to the jail, which was situated down the Lumberton Dirt Road (as the old turnpike antedating the plank-road was called), about half a mile south of the court-house. When the preliminaries of the lynching had been arranged, and a committee appointed to manage the affair, the crowd dispersed, some to go to their dinners, and some to secure recruits for the lynching party.
It was twenty minutes to five o'clock, when an excited negro, panting and perspiring, rushed up to the back door of Sheriff Campbell's dwelling, which stood at a little distance from the jail and somewhat farther than the latter building from the court-house. A turbaned colored woman came to the door in response to the negro's knock.
"Hoddy, Sis' Nance."
"Hoddy, Brer Sam."
"Is de shurff in," inquired the negro.
"Yas, Brer Sam, he's eatin' his dinner," was the answer.
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"Will yer ax 'im ter step ter de do' a minute, Sis' Nance?"
The woman went into the dining-room, and a moment later the sheriff came to the door. He was a tall, muscular man, of a ruddier complexion than is usual among Southerners. A pair of keen, deep-set gray eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows, and about his mouth was a masterful expression, which a full beard, once sandy in color, but now profusely sprinkled with gray, could not entirely conceal. The day was hot; the sheriff had discarded his coat and vest, and had his white shirt open at the throat.
"What do you want, Sam?" he inquired of the negro, who stood hat in hand, wiping the moisture from his face with a ragged shirt-sleeve.
"Shurff, dey gwine ter hang de pris'ner w'at's lock' up in de jail. Dey 're comin' dis a-way now. I wuz layin' down on a sack er corn down at de sto', behine a pile er flourbairls, w'en I hearn Doc' Cain en Kunnel Wright talkin' erbout it. I slip' outen de back do', en run here as fas' as I could. I hearn you say down ter de sto' once't dat you would n't let nobody take a pris'ner 'way
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fum you widout walkin' over yo' dead body, en I thought I'd let you know 'fo' dey come, so yer could pertec' de pris'ner."
The sheriff listened calmly, but his face grew firmer, and a determined gleam lit up his gray eyes. His frame grew more erect, and he unconsciously assumed the attitude of a soldier who momentarily expects to meet the enemy face to face.
"Much obliged, Sam," he answered. "I'll protect the prisoner. Who 's coming?"
"I dunno who-all is comin'," replied the negro. "Dere's Mistah McSwayne, en Doc' Cain, en Maje' McDonal', en Kunnel Wright, en a heap er yuthers. I wuz so skeered I done furgot mo'd'n half un em. I spec' dey mus' be mos' here by dis time, so I'll git outen de way, fer I don' want nobody fer ter think I wuz mix' up in dis business." The negro glanced nervously down the road toward the town, and made a movement as if to go away.
"Won't you have some dinner first?" asked the sheriff.
The negro looked longingly in at the open door, and sniffed the appetizing odor of boiled pork and collards.
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"I ain't got no time fer ter tarry, Shurff," he said, "but Sis' Nance mought gin me sump'n I could kyar in my han' en eat on de way."
A moment later Nancy brought him a huge sandwich of split corn-pone, with a thick slice of fat bacon inserted between the halves, and a couple of baked yams. The negro hastily replaced his ragged hat on his head, dropped the yams in the pocket of his capacious trousers, and, taking the sandwich in his hand, hurried across the road and disappeared in the woods beyond.
The sheriff reëntered the house, and put on his coat and hat. He then took down a double-barreled shotgun and loaded it with buckshot. Filling the chambers of a revolver with fresh cartridges, he slipped it into the pocket of the sack-coat which he wore.
A comely young woman in a calico dress watched these proceedings with anxious surprise.
"Where are you going, father?" she asked. She had not heard the conversation with the negro.
"I am goin' over to the jail," responded the sheriff. "There's a mob comin' this way
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to lynch the nigger we've got locked up. But they won't do it," he added, with emphasis.
"Oh, father! don't go!" pleaded the girl, clinging to his arm; "they'll shoot you if you don't give him up."
"You never mind me, Polly," said her father reassuringly, as he gently unclasped her hands from his arm. " I'll take care of myself and the prisoner, too. There ain't a man in Branson County that would shoot me. Besides, I have faced fire too often to be scared away from my duty. You keep close in the house," he continued, "and if any one disturbs you just use the old horse-pistol in the top bureau drawer. It 's a little old-fashioned, but it did good work a few years ago."
The young girl shuddered at this sanguinary allusion, but made no further objection to her father's departure.
The sheriff of Branson was a man far above the average of the community in wealth, education, and social position. His had been one of the few families in the county that before the war had owned large estates and numerous slaves. He had graduated at the State University at Chapel Hill,
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and had kept up some acquaintance with current literature and advanced thought. He had traveled some in his youth, and was looked up to in the county as an authority on all subjects connected with the outer world. At first an ardent supporter of the Union, he had opposed the secession movement in his native State as long as opposition availed to stem the tide of public opinion. Yielding at last to the force of circumstances, he had entered the Confederate service rather late in the war, and served with distinction through several campaigns, rising in time to the rank of colonel. After the war he had taken the oath of allegiance, and had been chosen by the people as the most available candidate for the office of sheriff, to which he had been elected without opposition. He had filled the office for several terms, and was universally popular with his constituents.
Colonel or Sheriff Campbell, as he was indifferently called, as the military or civil title happened to be most important in the opinion of the person addressing him, had a high sense of the responsibility attaching to his office. He had sworn to do his duty faithfully, and he knew what his duty was, as
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sheriff, perhaps more clearly than he had apprehended it in other passages of his life. It was, therefore, with no uncertainty in regard to his course that he prepared his weapons and went over to the jail. He had no fears for Polly's safety.
The sheriff had just locked the heavy front door of the jail behind him when a half dozen horsemen, followed by a crowd of men on foot, came round a bend in the road and drew near the jail. They halted in front of the picket fence that surrounded the building, while several of the committee of arrangements rode on a few rods farther to the sheriff's house. One of them dismounted and rapped on the door with his riding-whip.
"Is the sheriff at home?" he inquired.
"No, he has just gone out," replied Polly, who had come to the door.
"We want the jail keys," he continued.
"They are not here," said Polly. "The sheriff has them himself." Then she added, with assumed indifference, "He is at the jail now."
The man turned away, and Polly went into the front room, from which she peered anxiously between the slats of the green blinds
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of a window that looked toward the jail. Meanwhile the messenger returned to his companions and announced his discovery. It looked as though the sheriff had learned of their design and was preparing to resist it.
One of them stepped forward and rapped on the jail door.
"Well, what is it?" said the sheriff, from within.
"We want to talk to you, Sheriff," replied the spokesman.
There was a little wicket in the door; this the sheriff opened, and answered through it.
"All right, boys, talk away. You are all strangers to me, and I don't know what business you can have." The sheriff did not think it necessary to recognize anybody in particular on such an occasion; the question of identity sometimes comes up in the investigation of these extra-judicial executions.
"We're a committee of citizens and we want to get into the jail."
"What for? It ain't much trouble to get into jail. Most people want to keep out."
The mob was in no humor to appreciate a joke, and the sheriffs witticism fell dead upon an unresponsive audience.
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"We want to have a talk with the nigger that killed Cap'n Walker."
"You can talk to that nigger in the courthouse, when he 's brought out for trial. Court will be in session here next week. I know what you fellows want, but you can't get my prisoner to-day. Do you want to take the bread out of a poor man's mouth? I get seventy-five cents a day for keeping this prisoner, and he 's the only one in jail. I can't have my family suffer just to please you fellows."
One or two young men in the crowd laughed at the idea of Sheriff Campbell's suffering for want of seventy-five cents a day; but they were frowned into silence by those who stood near them.
"Ef yer don't let us in," cried a voice, "we'll bu's' the do' open."
"Bust away," answered the sheriff, raising his voice so that all could hear. "But I give you fair warning. The first man that tries it will be filled with buckshot. I'm sheriff of this county; I know my duty, and I mean to do it."
"What's the use of kicking, Sheriff?" argued one of the leaders of the mob. "The
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nigger is sure to hang anyhow; he richly deserves it; and we 've got to do something to teach the niggers their places, or white people won't be able to live in the county."
"There 's no use talking, boys," responded the sheriff. "I'm a white man outside, but in this jail I'm sheriff; and if this nigger 's to be hung in this county, I propose to do the hanging. So you fellows might as well right-about-face, and march back to Troy. You've had a pleasant trip, and the exercise will be good for you. You know me. I've got powder and ball, and I've faced fire before now, with nothing between me and the enemy, and I don't mean to surrender this jail while I 'm able to shoot." Having thus announced his determination, the sheriff closed and fastened the wicket, and looked around for the best position from which to defend the building.
The crowd drew off a little, and the leaders conversed together in low tones.
The Branson County jail was a small, two-story brick building, strongly constructed, with no attempt at architectural ornamentation. Each story was divided into two large cells by a passage running from front to rear.
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"WE'LL BU'S' THE DO' OPEN"
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A grated iron door gave entrance from the passage to each of the four cells. The jail seldom had many prisoners in it, and the lower windows had been boarded up. When the sheriff had closed the wicket, he ascended the steep wooden stairs to the upper floor. There was no window at the front of the upper passage, and the most available position from which to watch the movements of the crowd below was the front window of the cell occupied by the solitary prisoner.
The sheriff unlocked the door and entered the cell. The prisoner was crouched in a corner, his yellow face, blanched with terror, looking ghastly in the semi-darkness of the room. A cold perspiration had gathered on his forehead, and his teeth were chattering with affright.
"For God's sake, Sheriff," he murmured hoarsely, "don't let 'em lynch me; I did n't kill the old man."
The sheriff glanced at the cowering wretch with a look of mingled contempt and loathing.
"Get up," he said sharply. "You will probably be hung sooner or later, but it shall not be to-day, if I can help it. I 'll unlock your fetters, and if I can't hold the jail, you 'll
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have to make the best fight you can. If I'm shot, I'll consider my responsibility at an end."
There were iron fetters on the prisoner's ankles, and handcuffs on his wrists. These the sheriff unlocked, and they fell clanking to the floor.
"Keep back from the window," said the sheriff. "They might shoot if they saw you."
The sheriff drew toward the window a pine bench which formed a part of the scanty furniture of the cell, and laid his revolver upon it. Then he took his gun in hand, and took his stand at the side of the window where he could with least exposure of himself watch the movements of the crowd below.
The lynchers had not anticipated any determined resistance. Of course they had looked for a formal protest, and perhaps a sufficient show of opposition to excuse the sheriff in the eye of any stickler for legal formalities. They had not however come prepared to fight a battle, and no one of them seemed willing to lead an attack upon the jail. The leaders of the party conferred together with a good deal of animated gesticulation, which was visible to the sheriff from his outlook,
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though the distance was too great for him to hear what was said. At length one of them broke away from the group, and rode back to the main body of the lynchers, who were restlessly awaiting orders.
"Well, boys," said the messenger, "we'll have to let it go for the present. The sheriff says he'll shoot, and he's got the drop on us this time. There ain't any of us that want to follow Cap'n Walker jest yet. Besides, the sheriff is a good fellow, and we don't want to hurt 'im. But," he added, as if to reassure the crowd, which began to show signs of disappointment, "the nigger might as well say his prayers, for he ain't got long to live."
There was a murmur of dissent from the mob, and several voices insisted that an attack be made on the jail. But pacific counsels finally prevailed, and the mob sullenly withdrew.
The sheriff stood at the window until they had disappeared around the bend in the road. He did not relax his watchfulness when the last one was out of sight. Their withdrawal might be a mere feint, to be followed by a further attempt. So closely, indeed, was his attention drawn to the outside, that he neither
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saw nor heard the prisoner creep stealthily across the floor, reach out his hand and secure the revolver which lay on the bench behind the sheriff, and creep as noiselessly back to his place in the corner of the room.
A moment after the last of the lynching party had disappeared there was a shot fired from the woods across the road; a bullet whistled by the window and buried itself in the wooden casing a few inches from where the sheriff was standing. Quick as thought, with the instinct born of a semi-guerrilla army experience, he raised his gun and fired twice at the point from which a faint puff of smoke showed the hostile bullet to have been sent. He stood a moment watching, and then rested his gun against the window, and reached behind him mechanically for the other weapon. It was not on the bench. As the sheriff realized this fact, he turned his head and looked into the muzzle of the revolver.
"Stay where you are, Sheriff," said the prisoner, his eyes glistening, his face almost ruddy with excitement.
The sheriff mentally cursed his own carelessness for allowing him to be caught in such a predicament. He had not expected anything
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of the kind. He had relied on the negro's cowardice and subordination in the presence of an armed white man as a matter of course. The sheriff was a brave man, but realized that the prisoner had him at an immense disadvantage. The two men stood thus for a moment, fighting a harmless duel with their eyes.
"Well, what do you mean to do?" asked the sheriff with apparent calmness.
"To get away, of course," said the prisoner, in a tone which caused the sheriff to look at him more closely, and with an involuntary feeling of apprehension; if the man was not mad, he was in a state of mind akin to madness, and quite as dangerous. The sheriff felt that he must speak the prisoner fair, and watch for a chance to turn the tables on him. The keen-eyed, desperate man before him was a different being altogether from the groveling wretch who had begged so piteously for life a few minutes before.
At length the sheriff spoke: -
"Is this your gratitude to me for saving your life at the risk of my own? If I had not done so, you would now be swinging from the limb of some neighboring tree."
"True," said the prisoner, "you saved my
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life, but for how long? When you came in, you said Court would sit next week. When the crowd went away they said I had not long to live. It is merely a choice of two ropes."
"While there's life there's hope," replied the sheriff. He uttered this commonplace mechanically, while his brain was busy in trying to think out some way of escape. "If you are innocent you can prove it."
The mulatto kept his eye upon the sheriff. "I didn't kill the old man," he replied; "but I shall never be able to clear myself. I was at his house at nine o'clock. I stole from it the coat that was on my back when I was taken. I would be convicted, even with a fair trial, unless the real murderer were discovered beforehand."
The sheriff knew this only too well. While he was thinking what argument next to use, the prisoner continued: -
"Throw me the keys - no, unlock the door."
The sheriff stood a moment irresolute. The mulatto's eye glittered ominously. The sheriff crossed the room and unlocked the door leading into the passage.
"Now go down and unlock the outside door."
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The heart of the sheriff leaped within him. Perhaps he might make a dash for liberty, and gain the outside. He descended the narrow stairs, the prisoner keeping close behind him.
The sheriff inserted the huge iron key into the lock. The rusty bolt yielded slowly. It still remained for him to pull the door open.
"Stop!" thundered the mulatto, who seemed to divine the sheriff's purpose. "Move a muscle, and I 'll blow your brains out."
The sheriff obeyed; he realized that his chance had not yet come.
"Now keep on that side of the passage, and go back upstairs."
Keeping the sheriff under cover of the revolver, the mulatto followed him up the stairs. The sheriff expected the prisoner to lock him into the cell and make his own escape. He had about come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do under the circumstances was to submit quietly, and take his chances of recapturing the prisoner after the alarm had been given. The sheriff had faced death more than once upon the battlefield. A few minutes before, well armed, and with a brick wall between him and them he had dared a
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hundred men to fight; but he felt instinctively that the desperate man confronting him was not to be trifled with, and he was too prudent a man to risk his life against such heavy odds. He had Polly to look after, and there was a limit beyond which devotion to duty would be quixotic and even foolish.
"I want to get away," said the prisoner, "and I don't want to be captured; for if I am I know I will be hung on the spot. I am afraid," he added somewhat reflectively, "that in order to save myself I shall have to kill you."
"Good God!" exclaimed the sheriff in involuntary terror; "you would not kill the man to whom you owe your own life."
"You speak more truly than you know," replied the mulatto. "I indeed owe my life to you."
The sheriff started. He was capable of surprise, even in that moment of extreme peril. "Who are you?" he asked in amazement.
"Tom, Cicely's son," returned the other. He had closed the door and stood talking to the sheriff through the grated opening. "Don't you remember Cicely - Cicely whom
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you sold, with her child, to the speculator on his way to Alabama?"
The sheriff did remember. He had been sorry for it many a time since. It had been the old story of debts, mortgages, and bad crops. He had quarreled with the mother. The price offered for her and her child had been unusually large, and he had yielded to the combination of anger and pecuniary stress.
"Good God!" he gasped, "you would not murder your own father?"
"My father?" replied the mulatto. "It were well enough for me to claim the relationship, but it comes with poor grace from you to ask anything by reason of it. What father's duty have you ever performed for me? Did you give me your name, or even your protection? Other white men gave their colored sons freedom and money, and sent them to the free States. You sold me to the rice swamps."
"I at least gave you the life you cling to," murmured the sheriff.
"Life?" said the prisoner, with a sarcastic laugh. "What kind of a life? You gave me your own blood, your own features, - no
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man need look at us together twice to see that, - and you gave me a black mother. Poor wretch! She died under the lash, because she had enough womanhood to call her soul her own. You gave me a white man's spirit, and you made me a slave, and crushed it out."
"But you are free now," said the sheriff. He had not doubted, could not doubt, the mulatto's word. He knew whose passions coursed beneath that swarthy skin and burned in the black eyes opposite his own. He saw in this mulatto what he himself might have become had not the safeguards of parental restraint and public opinion been thrown around him.
"Free to do what?" replied the mulatto. "Free in name, but despised and scorned and set aside by the people to whose race I belong far more than to my mother's."
"There are schools," said the sheriff. "You have been to school." He had noticed that the mulatto spoke more eloquently and used better language than most Branson County people.
"I have been to school, and dreamed when I went that it would work some marvelous
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change in my condition. But what did I learn? I learned to feel that no degree of learning or wisdom will change the color of my skin and that I shall always wear what in my own country is a badge of degradation. When I think about it seriously I do not care particularly for such a life. It is the animal in me, not the man, that flees the gallows. I owe you nothing," he went on, "and expect nothing of you; and it would be no more than justice if I should avenge upon you my mother's wrongs and my own. But still I hate to shoot you; I have never yet taken human life - for I did notkill the old captain. Will you promise to give no alarm and make no attempt to capture me until morning, if I do not shoot?"
So absorbed were the two men in their colloquy and their own tumultuous thoughts that neither of them had heard the door below move upon its hinges. Neither of them had heard a light step come stealthily up the stairs, nor seen a slender form creep along the darkening passage toward the mulatto.
The sheriff hesitated. The struggle between his love of life and his sense of duty was a terrific one. It may seem strange that
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a man who could sell his own child into slavery should hesitate at such a moment, when his life was trembling in the balance. But the baleful influence of human slavery poisoned the very fountains of life, and created new standards of right. The sheriff was conscientious; his conscience had merely been warped by his environment. Let no one ask what his answer would have been; he was spared the necessity of a decision.
"Stop," said the mulatto, "you need not promise. I could not trust you if you did. It is your life for mine; there is but one safe way for me; you must die."
He raised his arm to fire, when there was a flash - a report from the passage behind him. His arm fell heavily at his side, and the pistol dropped at his feet.
The sheriff recovered first from his surprise, and throwing open the door secured the fallen weapon. Then seizing the prisoner he thrust him into the cell and locked the door upon him; after which he turned to Polly, who leaned half-fainting against the wall, her hands clasped over her heart.
"Oh, father, I was just in time!" she cried hysterically, and, wildly sobbing, threw herself into her father's arms.
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"I watched until they all went away," she said. "I heard the shot from the woods and I saw you shoot. Then when you did not come out I feared something had happened, that perhaps you had been wounded. I got out the other pistol and ran over here. When I found the door open, I knew something was wrong, and when I heard voices I crept up stairs, and reached the top just in time to hear him say he would kill you. Oh, it was a narrow escape!"
When she had grown somewhat calmer, the sheriff left her standing there and went back into the cell. The prisoner's arm was bleeding from a flesh wound. His bravado had given place to a stony apathy. There was no sign in his face of fear or disappointment or feeling of any kind. The sheriff sent Polly to the house for cloth, and bound up the prisoner's wound with a rude skill acquired during his army life.
"I'll have a doctor come and dress the wound in the morning," he said to the prisoner. "It will do very well until then, if you will keep quiet. If the doctor asks you how the wound was caused, you can say that you were struck by the bullet fired from the
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woods. It would do you no good to have known that you were shot while attempting to escape."
The prisoner uttered no word of thanks or apology, but sat in sullen silence. When the wounded arm had been bandaged, Polly and her father returned to the house.
The sheriff was in an unusually thoughtful mood that evening. He put salt in his coffee at supper, and poured vinegar over his pancakes. To many of Polly's questions he returned random answers. When he had gone to bed he lay awake for several hours.
In the silent watches of the night, when he was alone with God, there came into his mind a flood of unaccustomed thoughts. An hour or two before, standing face to face with death, he had experienced a sensation similar to that which drowning men are said to feel - a kind of clarifying of the moral faculty, in which the veil of the flesh, with its obscuring passions and prejudices, is pushed aside for a moment, and all the acts of one's life stand out, in the clear light of truth, in their correct proportions and relations, - a state of mind in which one sees himself as God may be supposed to see him. In the reaction
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following his rescue, this feeling had given place for a time to far different emotions. But now, in the silence of midnight, something of this clearness of spirit returned to the sheriff. He saw that he had owed some duty to this son of his, - that neither law nor custom could destroy a responsibility inherent in the nature of mankind. He could not thus, in the eyes of God at least, shake off the consequences of his sin. Had he never sinned, this wayward spirit would never have come back from the vanished past to haunt him. As these thoughts came, his anger against the mulatto died away, and in its place there sprang up a great pity. The hand of parental authority might have restrained the passions he had seen burning in the prisoner's eyes when the desperate man spoke the words which had seemed to doom his father to death. The sheriff felt that he might have saved this fiery spirit from the slough of slavery; that he might have sent him to the free North, and given him there, or in some other land, an opportunity to turn to usefulness and honorable pursuits the talents that had run to crime, perhaps to madness; he might, still less, have given this son of his the poor simulacrum of
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liberty which men of his caste could possess in a slave-holding community; or least of all, but still something, he might have kept the boy on the plantation, where the burdens of slavery would have fallen lightly upon him.
The sheriff recalled his own youth. He had inherited an honored name to keep untarnished; he had had a future to make; the picture of a fair young bride had beckoned him on to happiness. The poor wretch now stretched upon a pallet of straw between the brick walls of the jail had had none of these things, - no name, no father, no mother - in the true meaning of motherhood, - and until the past few years no possible future, and then one vague and shadowy in its outline, and dependent for form and substance upon the slow solution of a problem in which there were many unknown quantities.
From what he might have done to what he might yet do was an easy transition for the awakened conscience of the sheriff. It occurred to him, purely as a hypothesis, that he might permit his prisoner to escape; but his oath of office, his duty as sheriff, stood in the way of such a course, and the sheriff dismissed the idea from his mind. He could, however, investigate the circumstances of the
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murder, and move Heaven and earth to discover the real criminal, for he no longer doubted the prisoner's innocence; he could employ counsel for the accused, and perhaps influence public opinion in his favor. An acquittal once secured, some plan could be devised by which the sheriff might in some degree atone for his crime against this son of his - against society - against God.
When the sheriff had reached this conclusion he fell into an unquiet slumber, from which he awoke late the next morning.
He went over to the jail before breakfast and found the prisoner lying on his pallet, his face turned to the wall; he did not move when the sheriff rattled the door.
"Good-morning," said the latter, in a tone intended to waken the prisoner.
There was no response. The sheriff looked more keenly at the recumbent figure; there was an unnatural rigidity about its attitude.
He hastily unlocked the door and, entering the cell, bent over the prostrate form. There was no sound of breathing; he turned the body over - it was cold and stiff. The prisoner had torn the bandage from his wound and bled to death during the night. He had evidently been dead several hours.
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A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE
I
"WHAT our country needs most in its treatment of the race problem," observed Mr. Cicero Clayton at one of the monthly meetings of the Blue Vein Society, of which he was a prominent member, "is a clearer conception of the brotherhood of man."
The same sentiment in much the same words had often fallen from Mr. Clayton's lips, - so often, in fact, that the younger members of the society sometimes spoke of him - among themselves of course - as "Brotherhood Clayton." The sobriquet derived its point from the application he made of the principle involved in this oft-repeated proposition.
The fundamental article of Mr. Clayton's social creed was that he himself was not a negro.
"I know," he would say, "that the white people lump us all together as negroes, and
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condemn us all to the same social ostracism. But I don't accept this classification, for my part, and I imagine that, as the chief party in interest, I have a right to my opinion. People who belong by half or more of their blood to the most virile and progressive race of modern times have as much right to call themselves white as others have to call them negroes."
Mr. Clayton spoke warmly, for he was well informed, and had thought much upon the subject; too much, indeed, for he had not been able to escape entirely the tendency of too much concentration upon one subject to make even the clearest minds morbid.
"Of course we can't enforce our claims, or protect ourselves from being robbed of our birthright; but we can at least have principles, and try to live up to them the best we can. If we are not accepted as white, we can at any rate make it clear that we object to being called black. Our protest cannot fail in time to impress itself upon the better class of white people; for the Anglo-Saxon race loves justice, and will eventually do it, where it does not conflict with their own interests."
Whether or not the fact that Mr. Clayton
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meant no sarcasm, and was conscious of no inconsistency in this eulogy, tended to establish the racial identity he claimed may safely be left to the discerning reader.
In living up to his creed Mr. Clayton declined to associate to any considerable extent with black people. This was sometimes a little inconvenient, and occasionally involved a sacrifice of some pleasure for himself and his family, because they would not attend entertainments where many black people were likely to be present. But they had a social refuge in a little society of people like themselves; they attended, too, a church, of which nearly all the members were white, and they were connected with a number of the religious and benevolent associations open to all good citizens, where they came into contact with the better class of white people, and were treated, in their capacity of members, with a courtesy and consideration scarcely different from that accorded to other citizens.
Mr. Clayton's racial theory was not only logical enough, but was in his own case backed up by substantial arguments. He had begun life with a small patrimony, and had invested his money in a restaurant, which by careful
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and judicious attention had grown from a cheap eating-house into the most popular and successful confectionery and catering establishment in Groveland. His business occupied a double store on Oakwood Avenue. He owned houses and lots, and stocks and bonds, had good credit at the banks, and lived in a style befitting his income and business standing. In person he was of olive complexion, with slightly curly hair. His features approached the Cuban or Latin-American type rather than the familiar broad characteristics of the mulatto, this suggestion of something foreign being heightened by a Vandyke beard and a carefully waxed and pointed mustache. When he walked to church on Sunday mornings with his daughter Alice, they were a couple of such striking appearance as surely to attract attention.
Miss Alice Clayton was queen of her social set. She was young, she was handsome. She was nearly white; she frankly confessed her sorrow that she was not entirely so. She was accomplished and amiable, dressed in good taste, and had for her father by all odds the richest colored man - the term is used with apologies to Mr. Clayton, explaining that it
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does not necessarily mean a negro - in Groveland. So pronounced was her superiority that really she had but one social rival worthy of the name, - Miss Lura Watkins, whose father kept a prosperous livery stable and lived in almost as good style as the Claytons. Miss Watkins, while good-looking enough, was not so young nor quite so white as Miss Clayton. She was popular, however, among their mutual acquaintances, and there was a good-natured race between the two as to which should make the first and best marriage.
Marriages among Miss Clayton's set were serious affairs. Of course marriage is always a serious matter, whether it be a success or a failure, and there are those who believe that any marriage is better than no marriage. But among Miss Clayton's friends and associates matrimony took on an added seriousness because of the very narrow limits within which it could take place. Miss Clayton and her friends, by reason of their assumed superiority to black people, or perhaps as much by reason of a somewhat morbid shrinking from the curiosity manifested toward married people of strongly contrasting colors, would not marry black men, and except in rare instances white
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men would not marry them. They were therefore restricted for a choice to the young men of their own complexion. But these, unfortunately for the girls, had a wider choice. In any State where the laws permit freedom of the marriage contract, a man, by virtue of his sex, can find a wife of whatever complexion he prefers; of course he must not always ask too much in other respects, for most women like to better their social position when they marry. To the number thus lost by "going on the other side," as the phrase went, add the worthless contingent whom no self-respecting woman would marry, and the choice was still further restricted; so that it had become fashionable, when the supply of eligible men ran short, for those of Miss Clayton's set who could afford it to go traveling, ostensibly for pleasure, but with the serious hope that they might meet their fate away from home.
Miss Clayton had perhaps a larger option than any of her associates. Among such men as there were she could have taken her choice. Her beauty, her position, her accomplishments, her father's wealth, all made her eminently desirable. But, on the other hand, the same things rendered her more difficult to reach, and
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harder to please. To get access to her heart, too, it was necessary to run the gauntlet of her parents, which, until she had reached the age of twenty-three, no one had succeeded in doing safely. Many had called, but none had been chosen.
There was, however, one spot left unguarded, and through it Cupid, a veteran sharpshooter, sent a dart. Mr. Clayton had taken into his service and into his household a poor relation, a sort of cousin several times removed. This boy - his name was Jack - had gone into Mr. Clayton's service at a very youthful age, - twelve or thirteen. He had helped about the housework, washed the dishes, swept the floors, taken care of the lawn and the stable for three or four years, while he attended school. His cousin had then taken him into the store, where he had swept the floor, washed the windows, and done a class of work that kept fully impressed upon him the fact that he was a poor dependent. Nevertheless he was a cheerful lad, who took what he could get and was properly grateful, but always meant to get more. By sheer force of industry and affability and shrewdness, he forced his employer to promote him in time
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to a position of recognized authority in the establishment. Any one outside of the family would have perceived in him a very suitable husband for Miss Clayton; he was of about the same age, or a year or two older, was as fair of complexion as she, when she was not powdered, and was passably good-looking, with a bearing of which the natural manliness had been no more warped than his training and racial status had rendered inevitable; for he had early learned the law of growth, that to bend is better than to break. He was sometimes sent to accompany Miss Clayton to places in the evening, when she had no other escort, and it is quite likely that she discovered his good points before her parents did. That they should in time perceive them was inevitable. But even then, so accustomed were they to looking down upon the object of their former bounty, that they only spoke of the matter jocularly.
"Well, Alice," her father would say in his bluff way, "you'll not be absolutely obliged to die an old maid. If we can't find anything better for you, there 's always Jack. As long as he does n't take to some other girl, you can fall back on him as a last chance. He 'd be glad to take you to get into the business."
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Miss Alice had considered the joke a very poor one when first made, but by occasional repetition she became somewhat familiar with it. In time it got around to Jack himself, to whom it seemed no joke at all. He had long considered it a consummation devoutly to be wished, and when he became aware that the possibility of such a match had occurred to the other parties in interest, he made up his mind that the idea should in due course of time become an accomplished fact. He had even suggested as much to Alice, in a casual way, to feel his ground; and while she had treated the matter lightly, he was not without hope that she had been impressed by the suggestion. Before he had had time, however, to follow up this lead, Miss Clayton, in the spring of 187-, went away on a visit to Washington.
The occasion of her visit was a presidential inauguration. The new President owed his nomination mainly to the votes of the Southern delegates in the convention, and was believed to be correspondingly well disposed to the race from which the Southern delegates were for the most part recruited. Friends of rival and unsuccessful candidates for the nomination had more than hinted that the
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Southern delegates were very substantially rewarded for their support at the time when it was given; whether this was true or not the parties concerned know best. At any rate the colored politicians did not see it in that light, for they were gathered from near and far to press their claims for recognition and patronage. On the evening following the White House inaugural ball, the colored people of Washington gave an "inaugural" ball at a large public hall. It was under the management of their leading citizens, among them several high officials holding over from the last administration, and a number of professional and business men. This ball was the most noteworthy social event that colored circles up to that time had ever known. There were many visitors from various parts of the country. Miss Clayton attended the ball, the honors of which she carried away easily. She danced with several partners, and was introduced to innumerable people whom she had never seen before, and whom she hardly expected ever to meet again. She went away from the ball, at four o'clock in the morning, in a glow of triumph, and with a confused impression of senators and representatives and
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lawyers and doctors of all shades, who had sought an introduction, led her through the dance, and overwhelmed her with compliments. She returned home the next day but one, after the most delightful week of her life.
II
One afternoon, about three weeks after her return from Washington, Alice received a letter through the mail. The envelope bore the words "House of Representatives" printed in one corner, and in the opposite corner, in a bold running hand, a Congressman's frank, "Hamilton M. Brown, M. C." The letter read as follows: -
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 30, 187-.
MISS ALICE CLAYTON, GROVELAND.
DEAR FRIEND (if I may be permitted to call you so after so brief an acquaintance), - I remember with sincerest pleasure our recent meeting at the inaugural ball, and the sensation created by your beauty, your amiable manners, and your graceful dancing. Time has so strengthened the impression I then received, that I should have felt inconsolable
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had I thought it impossible ever to again behold the charms which had brightened the occasion of our meeting and eclipsed by their brilliancy the leading belles of the capital. I had hoped, however, to have the pleasure of meeting you again, and circumstances have fortunately placed it in my power to do so at an early date. You have doubtless learned that the contest over the election in the Sixth Congressional District of South Carolina has been decided in my favor, and that I now have the honor of representing my native State at the national capital. I have just been appointed a member of a special committee to visit and inspect the Sault River and the Straits of Mackinac, with reference to the needs of lake navigation. I have made arrangements to start a week ahead of the other members of the committee, whom I am to meet in Detroit on the 20th. I shall leave here on the 2d, and will arrive in Groveland on the 3d, by the 7.30 evening express. I shall remain in Groveland several days, in the course of which I shall be pleased to call, and renew the acquaintance so auspiciously begun in Washington, which it is my fondest hope may ripen into a warmer friendship.
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If you do not regard my visit as presumptuous, and do not write me in the mean while forbidding it, I shall do myself the pleasure of waiting on you the morning after my arrival in Groveland.
With renewed expressions of my sincere admiration and profound esteem, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
HAMILTON M. BROWN, M.C.
To Alice, and especially to her mother, this bold and flowery letter had very nearly the force of a formal declaration. They read it over again and again, and spent most of the afternoon discussing it. There were few young men in Groveland eligible as husbands for so superior a person as Alice Clayton, and an addition to the number would be very acceptable. But the mere fact of his being a Congressman was not sufficient to qualify him; there were other considerations.
"I've never heard of this Honorable Hamilton M. Brown," said Mr. Clayton. The letter had been laid before him at the supper-table. "It 's strange, Alice, that you have n't said anything about him before. You must have met lots of swell folks not to recollect a Congressman."
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"But he was n't a Congressman then," answered Alice; "he was only a claimant. I remember Senator Bruce, and Mr. Douglass; but there were so many doctors and lawyers and politicians that I could n't keep track of them all. Still I have a faint impression of a Mr. Brown who danced with me."
She went into the parlor and brought out the dancing programme she had used at the Washington ball. She had decorated it with a bow of blue ribbon and preserved it as a souvenir of her visit.
"Yes," she said, after examining it, "I must have danced with him. Here are the initials - 'H. M. B.' "
"What color is he?" asked Mr. Clayton, as he plied his knife and fork.
"I have a notion that he was rather dark - darker than any one I had ever danced with before."
"Why did you dance with him?" asked her father. "You weren't obliged to go back on your principles because you were away from home."
"Well, father, 'when you're in Rome' - you know the rest. Mrs. Clearweather introduced me to several dark men, to him
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among others. They were her friends, and common decency required me to be courteous."
"If this man is black, we don't want to encourage him. If he 's the right sort, we'll invite him to the house."
"And make him feel at home," added Mrs. Clayton, on hospitable thoughts intent.
"We must ask Sadler about him to-morrow," said Mr. Clayton, when he had drunk his coffee and lighted his cigar. "If he 's the right man he shall have cause to remember his visit to Groveland. We'll show him that Washington is not the only town on earth."
The uncertainty of the family with regard to Mr. Brown was soon removed. Mr. Solomon Sadler, who was supposed to know everything worth knowing concerning the colored race, and everybody of importance connected with it, dropped in after supper to make an evening call. Sadler was familiar with the history of every man of negro ancestry who had distinguished himself in any walk of life. He could give the pedigree of Alexander Pushkin, the titles of scores of Dumas's novels (even Sadler had not time to learn them all), and could recite the whole of Wendell
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Phillips's lecture on Toussaint l'Ouverture. He claimed a personal acquaintance with Mr. Frederick Douglass, and had been often in Washington, where he was well known and well received in good colored society.
"Let me see," he said reflectively, when asked for information about the Honorable Hamilton M. Brown. "Yes, I think I know him. He studied at Oberlin just after the war. He was about leaving there when I entered. There were two H. M. Browns there - a Hamilton M. Brown and a Henry M. Brown. One was stout and dark and the other was slim and quite light; you could scarcely tell him from a dark white man. They used to call them 'light Brown' and 'dark Brown.' I did n't know either of them except by sight, for they were there only a few weeks after I went in. As I remember them, Hamilton was the fair one - a very good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, and, as I heard, a good student and a fine speaker."
"Do you remember what kind of hair he had?" asked Mr. Clayton.
"Very good indeed; straight, as I remember it. He looked something like a Spaniard or a Portuguese."
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"Now that you describe him," said Alice, "I remember quite well dancing with such a gentleman; and I 'm wrong about my 'H. M. B.' The dark man must have been some one else; there are two others on my card that I can't remember distinctly, and he was probably one of those."
"I guess he 's all right, Alice," said her father when Sadler had gone away. "He evidently means business, and we must treat him white. Of course he must stay with us; there are no hotels in Groveland while he is here. Let's see - he'll be here in three days. That is n't very long, but I guess we can get ready. I 'll write a letter this afternoon - or you write it, and invite him to the house, and say I'll meet him at the depot. And you may have carte blanche for making the preparations."
"We must have some people to meet him."
"Certainly; a reception is the proper thing. Sit down immediately and write the letter and I'll mail it first thing in the morning, so he 'll get it before he has time to make other arrangements. And you and your mother put your heads together and make out a list of guests, and I 'll have the invitations
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printed to-morrow. We will show the darkeys of Groveland how to entertain a Congressman."
It will be noted that in moments of abstraction or excitement Mr. Clayton sometimes relapsed into forms of speech not entirely consistent with his principles. But some allowance must be made for his atmosphere; he could no more escape from it than the leopard can change his spots, or the - In deference to Mr. Clayton's feelings the quotation will be left incomplete.
Alice wrote the letter on the spot and it was duly mailed, and sped on its winged way to Washington.
The preparations for the reception were made as thoroughly and elaborately as possible on so short a notice. The invitations were issued; the house was cleaned from attic to cellar; an orchestra was engaged for the evening; elaborate floral decorations were planned and the flowers ordered. Even the refreshments, which ordinarily, in the household of a caterer, would be mere matter of familiar detail, became a subject of serious consultation and study.
The approaching event was a matter of
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very much interest to the fortunate ones who were honored with invitations, and this for several reasons. They were anxious to meet this sole representative of their race in the - th Congress, and as he was not one of the old-line colored leaders, but a new star risen on the political horizon, there was a special curiosity to see who he was and what he looked like. Moreover, the Claytons did not often entertain a large company, but when they did, it was on a scale commensurate with their means and position, and to be present on such an occasion was a thing to remember and to talk about. And, most important consideration of all, some remarks dropped by members of the Clayton family had given rise to the rumor that the Congressman was seeking a wife. This invested his visit with a romantic interest, and gave the reception a practical value; for there were other marriageable girls besides Miss Clayton, and if one was left another might be taken.
III
On the evening of April 3d, at fifteen minutes of six o'clock, Mr. Clayton, accompanied
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by Jack, entered the livery carriage waiting at his gate and ordered the coachman to drive to the Union Depot. He had taken Jack along, partly for company, and partly that Jack might relieve the Congressman of any trouble about his baggage, and make himself useful in case of emergency. Jack was willing enough to go, for he had foreseen in the visitor a rival for Alice's hand, - indeed he had heard more or less of the subject for several days, - and was glad to make a reconnaissance before the enemy arrived upon the field of battle. He had made - at least he had thought so - considerable progress with Alice during the three weeks since her return from Washington, and once or twice Alice had been perilously near the tender stage. This visit had disturbed the situation and threatened to ruin his chances; but he did not mean to give up without a struggle.
Arrived at the main entrance, Mr. Clayton directed the carriage to wait, and entered the station with Jack. The Union Depot at Groveland was an immense oblong structure, covering a dozen parallel tracks and furnishing terminal passenger facilities for half a dozen railroads. The tracks ran east and west, and
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the depot was entered from the south, at about the middle of the building. On either side of the entrance, the waiting-rooms, refreshment rooms, baggage and express departments, and other administrative offices, extended in a row for the entire length of the building; and beyond them and parallel with them stretched a long open space, separated from the tracks by an iron fence or grille.There were two entrance gates in the fence, at which tickets must be shown before access could be had to trains, and two other gates, by which arriving passengers came out.
Mr. Clayton looked at the blackboard on the wall underneath the station clock, and observed that the 7.30 train from Washington was five minutes late. Accompanied by Jack he walked up and down the platform until the train, with the usual accompaniment of panting steam and clanging bell and rumbling trucks, pulled into the station, and drew up on the third or fourth track from the iron railing. Mr. Clayton stationed himself at the gate nearest the rear end of the train, reasoning that the Congressman would ride in a parlor car, and would naturally come out by the gate nearest the point at which he left the train.
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"You 'd better go and stand by the other gate, Jack," he said to his companion, "and stop him if he goes out that way."
The train was well filled and a stream of passengers poured through. Mr. Clayton scanned the crowd carefully as they approached the gate, and scrutinized each passenger as he came through, without seeing any one that met the description of Congressman Brown, as given by Sadler, or any one that could in his opinion be the gentleman for whom he was looking. When the last one had passed through he was left to the conclusion that his expected guest had gone out by the other gate. Mr. Clayton hastened thither.
"Did n't he come out this way, Jack?" he asked.
"No, sir," replied the young man, "I have n't seen him."
"That 's strange," mused Mr. Clayton, somewhat anxiously. "He would hardly fail to come without giving us notice. Surely we must have missed him. We'd better look around a little. You go that way and I 'll go this."
Mr. Clayton turned and walked several
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rods along the platform to the men's waitingroom, and standing near the door glanced around to see if he could find the object of his search. The only colored person in the room was a stout and very black man, wearing a broadcloth suit and a silk hat, and seated a short distance from the door. On the seat by his side stood a couple of valises. On one of them, the one nearest him, on which his arm rested, was written, in white letters, plainly legible, -
"H. M. BROWN, M. C.
"Washington, D. C."
Mr. Clayton's feelings at this discovery can better be imagined than described. He hastily left the waiting-room, before the black gentleman, who was looking the other way, was even aware of his presence, and, walking rapidly up and down the platform, communed with himself upon what course of action the situation demanded. He had invited to his house, had come down to meet, had made elaborate preparations to entertain on the following evening, a light-colored man, - a white man by his theory, an acceptable guest, a possible husband for his daughter, an avowed
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suitor for her hand. If the Congressman had turned out to be brown, even dark brown, with fairly good hair, though he might not have desired him as a son-in-law, yet he could have welcomed him as a guest. But even this softening of the blow was denied him, for the man in the waiting-room was palpably, aggressively black, with pronounced African features and woolly hair, without apparently a single drop of redeeming white blood. Could he, in the face of his well-known principles, his lifelong rule of conduct, take this negro into his home and introduce him to his friends? Could he subject his wife and daughter to the rude shock of such a disappointment? It would be bad enough for them to learn of the ghastly mistake, but to have him in the house would be twisting the arrow in the wound.
Mr. Clayton had the instincts of a gentleman, and realized the delicacy of the situation. But to get out of his difficulty without wounding the feelings of the Congressman required not only diplomacy but dispatch. Whatever he did must be done promptly; for if he waited many minutes the Congressman would probably take a carriage and be driven to Mr. Clayton's residence.
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A ray of hope came for a moment to illumine the gloom of the situation. Perhaps the black man was merely sitting there, and not the owner of the valise! For there were two valises, one on each side of the supposed Congressman. For obvious reasons he did not care to make the inquiry himself, so he looked around for his companion, who came up a moment later.
"Jack," he exclaimed excitedly, "I 'm afraid we're in the worst kind of a hole, unless there 's some mistake! Run down to the men's waitingroom and you 'll see a man and a valise, and you'll understand what I mean. Ask that darkey if he is the Honorable Mr. Brown, Congressman from South Carolina. If he says yes, come back right away and let me know, without giving him time to ask any questions, and put your wits to work to help me out of the scrape."
"I wonder what 's the matter?" said Jack to himself, but did as he was told. In a moment he came running back.
"Yes, sir," he announced; "he says he's the man."
"Jack," said Mr. Clayton desperately, "if you want to show your appreciation of what
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I 've done for you, you must suggest some way out of this. I'd never dare to take that negro to my house, and yet I 'm obliged to treat him like a gentleman."
Jack's eyes had worn a somewhat reflective look since he had gone to make the inquiry. Suddenly his face brightened with intelligence, and then, as a newsboy ran into the station calling his wares, hardened into determination.
"Clarion, special extry 'dition! All about de epidemic er dipt'eria!" clamored the newsboy with shrill childish treble, as he made his way toward the waiting-room. Jack darted after him, and saw the man to whom he had spoken buy a paper. He ran back to his employer, and dragged him over toward the ticket-seller's window.
"I have it, sir!" he exclaimed, seizing a telegraph blank and writing rapidly, and reading aloud as he wrote. "How 's this for a way out?" -
"DEAR SIR, - I write you this note here in the depot to inform you of an unfortunate event which has interfered with my plans and those of my family for your entertainment
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while in Groveland. Yesterday my daughter Alice complained of a sore throat, which by this afternoon had developed into a case of malignant diphtheria. In consequence our house has been quarantined; and while I have felt myself obliged to come down to the depot, I do not feel that I ought to expose you to the possibility of infection, and I therefore send you this by another hand. The bearer will conduct you to a carriage which I have ordered placed at your service, and unless you should prefer some other hotel, you will be driven to the Forest Hill House, where I beg you will consider yourself my guest during your stay in the city, and make the fullest use of every convenience it may offer. From present indications I fear no one of our family will be able to see you, which we shall regret beyond expression, as we have made elaborate arrangements for your entertainment. I still hope, however, that you may enjoy your visit, as there are many places of interest in the city, and many friends will doubtless be glad to make your acquaintance.
"With assurances of my profound regret, I am
Sincerely yours,
"CICERO CLAYTON."
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"Splendid!" cried Mr. Clayton. "You 've
helped me out of a horrible scrape. Now, go and
take him to the hotel and see him comfortably
located, and tell them to charge the bill to me." "I suspect, sir," suggested Jack, "that I'd
better not go up to the house, and you 'll have
to stay in yourself for a day or two, to keep up
appearances. I'll sleep on the lounge at the store,
and we can talk business over the telephone." "All right, Jack, we'll arrange the details
later. But for Heaven's sake get him started, or
he 'll be calling a hack to drive up to the house.
I'll go home on a street car." "So far so good," sighed Mr. Clayton to
himself as he escaped from the station. "Jack is
a deuced clever fellow, and I 'll have to do
something more for him. But the tug-of-war is
yet to come. I 've got to bribe a doctor, shut up
the house for a day or two, and have all the
ill-humor of two disappointed women to endure
until this negro leaves town. Well, I'm sure my
wife and Alice will back me up at any cost. No
sacrifice is too great to escape having to entertain
him; of course I have no prejudice against his
color, - he
can't help that, - but it is the principleof the
thing. If we received him it would be a
concession fatal to all my views and theories.
And I am really doing him a kindness, for I'm
sure that all the world could not make Alice and
her mother treat him with anything but cold
politeness. It'll be a great mortification to Alice,
but I don't see how else I could have got out of
it." He boarded the first car that left the depot,
and soon reached home. The house was lighted
up, and through the lace curtains of the parlor
windows he could see his wife and daughter,
elegantly dressed, waiting to receive their
distinguished visitor. He rang the bell impatiently,
and a servant opened the door. "The gentleman did n't come?" asked the
maid. "No," he said as he hung up his hat. This
brought the ladies to the door. "He did n't come?" they exclaimed. "What's
the matter?" "I'll tell you," he said. "Mary," this to the
servant, a white girl, who stood in open-eyed
curiosity, "we shan't need you any more
to-night." Then he went into the parlor, and, closing
the door, told his story. When he reached the
point where he had discovered the color of the
honorable Mr. Brown, Miss Clayton caught her
breath, and was on the verge of collapse. "That nigger," said Mrs. Clayton indignantly,
"can never set foot in this house. But what did
you do with him?" Mr. Clayton quickly unfolded his plan, and
described the disposition he had made of the
Congressman. "It 's an awful shame," said Mrs. Clayton.
"Just think of the trouble and expense we have
gone to! And poor Alice 'll never get over it,
for everybody knows he came to see her and
that he's smitten with her. But you 've done just
right; we never would have been able to hold up
our heads again if we had introduced a black
man, even a Congressman, to the people that are
invited here to-morrow night, as a sweetheart of
Alice. Why, she wouldn't marry him if he was
President of the United States and plated with
gold an inch thick. The very idea!" "Well," said Mr. Clayton, "then we've got to
act quick. Alice must wrap up her throat - by
the way, Alice, how is your throat?"
"It 's sore," sobbed Alice, who had been in
tears almost from her father's return, "and I
don't care if I do have diphtheria and die, no, I
don't!" and she wept on. "Wrap up your throat and go to bed, and I'll
go over to Doctor Pillsbury's and get a diphtheria
card to nail up on the house. In the morning, first
thing, we 'll have to write notes recalling the
invitations for to-morrow evening, and have them
delivered by messenger boys. We were fools for
not finding out all about this man from some one
who knew, before we invited him here. Sadler
don't know more than half he thinks he does,
anyway. And we'll have to do this thing
thoroughly, or our motives will be misconstrued,
and people will say we are prejudiced and all
that, when it is only a matter of principle with us." The programme outlined above was carried
out to the letter. The invitations were recalled, to
the great disappointment of the invited guests.
The family physician called several times during
the day. Alice remained in bed, and the maid left
without notice, in such a hurry that she forgot to
take her best clothes.
Mr. Clayton himself remained at home. He had
a telephone in the house, and was therefore in
easy communication with his office, so that the
business did not suffer materially by reason of his
absence from the store. About ten o'clock in the
morning a note came up from the hotel,
expressing Mr. Brown's regrets and sympathy.
Toward noon Mr. Clayton picked up the morning
paper, which he had not theretofore had time to
read, and was glancing over it casually, when his
eye fell upon a column headed "A Colored
Congressman." He read the article with
astonishment that rapidly turned to chagrin and
dismay. It was an interview describing the
Congressman as a tall and shapely man, about
thirty-five years old, with an olive complexion not
noticeably darker than many a white man's,
straight hair, and eyes as black as sloes. "The bearing of this son of South Carolina
reveals the polished manners of the Southern
gentleman, and neither from his appearance nor
his conversation would one suspect that the white
blood which flows in his veins in such
preponderating measure had ever been crossed
by that of a darker race," wrote the reporter,
who had received instructions at
the office that for urgent business considerations
the lake shipping interest wanted Representative
Brown treated with marked consideration. There was more of the article, but the
introductory portion left Mr. Clayton in such a
state of bewilderment that the paper fell from his
hand. What was the meaning of it? Had he been
mistaken? Obviously so, or else the reporter
was wrong, which was manifestly improbable.
When he had recovered himself somewhat, he
picked up the newspaper and began reading
where he had left off. "Representative Brown traveled to Groveland
in company with Bishop Jones of the African
Methodist Jerusalem Church, who is en routeto
attend the general conference of his denomination
at Detroit next week. The bishop, who came in
while the writer was interviewing Mr. Brown, is a
splendid type of the pure negro. He is said to be
a man of great power among his people, which
may easily be believed after one has looked upon
his expressive countenance and heard him
discuss the questions which affect the welfare of
his church and his race."
Mr. Clayton stared at the paper. " 'The
bishop,' " he repeated, " 'is a splendid type of the
pure negro. I must have mistaken the bishop for
the Congressman! But how in the world did
Jack get the thing balled up? I'll call up the store
and demand an explanation of him. "Jack," he asked, "what kind of a looking
man was the fellow you gave the note to at the
depot?" "He was a very wicked-looking fellow, sir,"
came back the answer. "He had a bad eye,
looked like a gambler, sir. I am not surprised that
you did n't want to entertain him, even if he was a
Congressman." "What color was he - that's what I want to
know - and what kind of hair did he have?" "Why, he was about my complexion, sir, and
had straight black hair." The rules of the telephone company did not
permit swearing over the line. Mr. Clayton broke
the rules. "Was there any one else with him?" he
asked when he had relieved his mind. "Yes, sir, Bishop Jones of the African
Methodist Jerusalem Church was sitting there
with him; they had traveled from Washington
together. I drove the bishop to his stopping-place
after I had left Mr. Brown at the hotel. I did n't
suppose you'd mind." Mr. Clayton fell into a chair, and indulged in
thoughts unutterable. He folded up the paper and slipped it under
the family Bible, where it was least likely to be
soon discovered. "I'll hide the paper, anyway," he groaned. "I'll
never hear the last of this till my dying day, so I
may as well have a few hours' respite. It 's too
late to go back, and we 've got to play the farce
out. Alice is really sick with disappointment, and
to let her know this now would only make her
worse. May be he'll leave town in a day or
two, and then she'll be in condition to stand it.
Such luck is enough to disgust a man with trying
to do right and live up to his principles." Time hung a little heavy on Mr. Clayton's
hands during the day. His wife was busy with the
housework. He answered several telephone calls
about Alice's health, and called up the store
occasionally to ask how the business was getting
on. After lunch he lay down on a sofa and took
a nap, from which
he was aroused by the sound of the door-bell.
He went to the door. The evening paper was
lying on the porch, and the newsboy, who had
not observed the diphtheria sign until after he had
rung, was hurrying away as fast as his legs would
carry him. Mr. Clayton opened the paper and looked it
through to see if there was any reference to the
visiting Congressman. He found what he sought
and more. An article on the local page contained
a résuméof the information given in the morning
paper, with the following additional paragraph: - "A reporter, who called at the Forest Hill this
morning to interview Representative Brown, was
informed that the Congressman had been invited
to spend the remainder of his time in Groveland
as the guest of Mr. William Watkins, the
proprietor of the popular livery establishment on
Main Street. Mr. Brown will remain in the city
several days, and a reception will be tendered
him at Mr. Watkins's on Wednesday evening." "That ends it," sighed Mr. Clayton. "The
dove of peace will never again rest on my
roof-tree." But why dwell longer on the sufferings of
Mr. Clayton, or attempt to describe the feelings
or chronicle the remarks of his wife and daughter
when they learned the facts in the case? As to Representative Brown, he was made
welcome in the hospitable home of Mr. William
Watkins. There was a large and brilliant
assemblage at the party on Wednesday evening,
at which were displayed the costumes prepared
for the Clayton reception. Mr. Brown took a
fancy to Miss Lura Watkins, to whom, before the
week was over, he became engaged to be
married. Meantime poor Alice, the innocent
victim of circumstances and principles, lay sick
abed with a supposititious case of malignant
diphtheria, and a real case of acute
disappointment and chagrin. "Oh, Jack!" exclaimed Alice, a few weeks
later, on the way home from evening church in
company with the young man, "what a dreadful
thing it all was! And to think of that hateful Lura
Watkins marrying the Congressman!" The street was shaded by trees at the point
where they were passing, and there was no one
in sight. Jack put his arm around her waist, and,
leaning over, kissed her.
"Never mind, dear," he said soothingly, "you
still have your 'last chance' left, and I 'll prove
myself a better man than the Congressman." Occasionally, at social meetings, when the
vexed question of the future of the colored race
comes up, as it often does, for discussion, Mr.
Clayton may still be heard to remark
sententiously: - "What the white people of the United States
need most, in dealing with this problem, is a
higher conception of the brotherhood of man.
For of one blood God made all the nations of
the earth."
THE old woman stood at the back door of the
cabin, shading, her eyes with her hand, and
looking across the vegetable garden that ran up to
the very door. Beyond the garden she saw,
bathed in the sunlight, a field of corn, just in the
ear, stretching for half a mile, its yellow, pollen-laden
tassels over-topping the dark green mass of
broad glistening blades; and in the distance,
through the faint morning haze of evaporating
dew, the line of the woods, of a still darker green,
meeting the clear blue of the summer sky. Old
Dinah saw, going down the path, a tall, brown
girl, in a homespun frock, swinging a slat-bonnet
in one hand and a splint basket in the other. "Oh, Cicely!" she called. The girl turned and answered in a resonant
voice, vibrating with youth and life, - "Yes, granny!"
"Be sho' and pick a good mess er peas, chile,
fer yo' gran'daddy 's gwine ter be home ter
dinner ter-day." The old woman stood a moment longer and
then turned to go into the house. What she had
not seen was that the girl was not only young, but
lithe and shapely as a sculptor's model; that her
bare feet seemed to spurn the earth as they
struck it; that though brown, she was not so
brown but that her cheek was darkly red with the
blood of another race than that which gave her
her name and station in life; and the old woman
did not see that Cicely's face was as comely as
her figure was superb, and that her eyes were
dreamy with vague yearnings. Cicely climbed the low fence between the
garden and the cornfield, and started down one
of the long rows leading directly away from the
house. Old Needham was a good ploughman,
and straight as an arrow ran the furrow between
the rows of corn, until it vanished in the distant
perspective. The peas were planted beside
alternate hills of corn, the corn-stalks serving as
supports for the climbing pea-vines. The vines
nearest the house had been picked more or less
clear of the long
green pods, and Cicely walked down the row for
a quarter of a mile, to where the peas were more
plentiful. And as she walked she thought of her
dream of the night before. She had dreamed a beautiful dream. The fact
that it was a beautiful dream, a delightful dream,
her memory retained very vividly. She was
troubled because she could not remember just
what her dream had been about. Of one other
fact she was certain, that in her dream she had
found something, and that her happiness had been
bound up with the thing she had found. As she
walked down the corn-row she ran over in her
mind the various things with which she had always
associated happiness. Had she found a gold ring?
No, it was not a gold ring - of that she felt sure.
Was it a soft, curly plume for her hat? She had
seen town people with them, and had indulged in
day-dreams on the subject; but it was not a
feather. Was it a brightcolored silk dress? No; as
much as she had always wanted one, it was not a
silk dress. For an instant, in a dream, she had
tasted some great and novel happiness, and when
she awoke it was dashed from her lips, and she
could not even enjoy the memory of it,
except in a vague, indefinite, and tantalizing way. Cicely was troubled, too, because dreams
were serious things. Dreams had certain
meanings, most of them, and some dreams went
by contraries. If her dream had been a prophecy
of some good thing, she had by forgetting it lost
the pleasure of anticipation. If her dream had
been one of those that go by contraries, the
warning would be in vain, because she would not
know against what evil to provide. So, with a
sigh, Cicely said to herself that it was a troubled
world, more or less; and having come to a
promising point, began to pick the tenderest
pea-pods and throw them into her basket. By the time she had reached the end of the line
the basket was nearly full. Glancing toward the
pine woods beyond the rail fence, she saw a
brier bush loaded with large, luscious
blackberries. Cicely was fond of blackberries, so
she set her basket down, climbed the fence, and
was soon busily engaged in gathering the fruit,
delicious even in its wild state. She had soon eaten all she cared for. But the
berries were still numerous, and it occurred
to her that her granddaddy would like a
blackberry pudding for dinner. Catching up her
apron, and using it as a receptacle for the
berries, she had gathered scarcely more than a
handful when she heard a groan. Cicely was not timid, and her curiosity being
aroused by the sound, she stood erect, and
remained in a listening attitude. In a moment the
sound was repeated, and, gauging the point from
which it came, she plunged resolutely into the
thick underbrush of the forest. She had gone but
a few yards when she stopped short with an
exclamation of surprise and concern. Upon the ground, under the shadow of the
towering pines, a man lay at full length, - a young
man, several years under thirty, apparently, so far
as his age could be guessed from a face that wore
a short soft beard, and was so begrimed with
dust and incrusted with blood that little could be
seen of the underlying integument. What was
visible showed a skin browned by nature or by
exposure. His hands were of even a darker
brown, almost as dark as Cicely's own. A tangled
mass of very curly black hair, matted with burs,
dank with dew, and clotted with
blood, fell partly over his forehead, on the edge
of which, extending back into the hair, an ugly
scalp wound was gaping, and, though apparently
not just inflicted, was still bleeding slowly, as
though reluctant to stop, in spite of the
coagulation that had almost closed it. Cicely with a glance took in all this and more.
But, first of all, she saw the man was wounded
and bleeding, and the nurse latent in all
womankind awoke in her to the requirements of
the situation. She knew there was a spring a few
rods away, and ran swiftly to it. There was usually
a gourd at the spring, but now it was gone.
Pouring out the blackberries in a little heap where
they could be found again, she took off her apron,
dipped one end of it into the spring, and ran back
to the wounded man. The apron was clean, and
she squeezed a little stream of water from it into
the man's mouth. He swallowed it with avidity.
Cicely then knelt by his side, and with the wet end
of her apron washed the blood from the wound
lightly, and the dust from the man's face. Then she
looked at her apron a moment, debating whether
she should tear it or not.
"I'm feared granny 'll be mad," she said to
herself. "I reckon I 'll jes' use de whole apron." So she bound the apron around his head as
well as she could, and then sat down a moment
on a fallen tree trunk, to think what she should do
next. The man already seemed more
comfortable; he had ceased moaning, and lay
quiet, though breathing heavily. "What shall I do with that man?" she
reflected. "I don' know whether he 's a w'ite man
or a black man. Ef he 's a w'ite man, I oughter go
an' tell de w'ite folks up at de big house, an' dey'd
take keer of 'im. If he 's a black man, I oughter
go tell granny. He don' look lack a black man
somehow er nuther, an' yet he don' look lack a
w'ite man; he's too dahk, an' his hair's too curly.
But I mus' do somethin' wid 'im. He can't be lef'
here ter die in de woods all by hisse'f. Reckon I'll
go an' tell granny." She scaled the fence, caught up the basket of
peas from where she had left it, and ran, lightly
and swiftly as a deer, toward the house. Her
short skirt did not impede her progress,
and in a few minutes she had
covered the half mile and was at the cabin door,
a slight heaving of her full and yet youthful
breast being the only sign of any unusual exertion. Her story was told in a moment. The old
woman took down a black bottle from a high
shelf, and set out with Cicely across the
cornfield, toward the wounded man. As they went through the corn Cicely recalled
part of her dream. She had dreamed that under
some strange circumstances - what they had been
was still obscure - she had met a young man - a
young man whiter than she and yet not all
white - and that he had loved her and courted her
and married her. Her dream had been all the
sweeter because in it she had first tasted the
sweetness of love, and she had not recalled it
before because only in her dream had she known
or thought of love as something supremely
desirable. With the memory of her dream, however, her
fears revived. Dreams were solemn things. To
Cicely the fabric of a vision was by no means
baseless. Her trouble arose from her not being
able to recall, though she was well versed in
dream-lore, just what event was foreshadowed
by a dream of finding a
wounded man. If the wounded man were of her
own race, her dream would thus far have been
realized, and having met the young man, the other
joys might be expected to follow. If he should
turn out to be a white man, then her dream was
clearly one of the kind that go by contraries, and
she could expect only sorrow and trouble and
pain as the proper sequences of this fateful
discovery. The two women reached the fence that
separated the cornfield from the pine woods. "How is I gwine ter git ovuh dat fence, chile?"
asked the old woman. "Wait a minute, granny," said Cicely; "I'll take
it down." It was only an eight-rail fence, and it was a
matter of but a few minutes for the girl to lift
down and lay to either side the ends of the rails
that formed one of the angles. This done, the old
woman easily stepped across the remaining two
or three rails. It was only a moment before they
stood by the wounded man. He was lying still,
breathing regularly, and seemingly asleep.
"What is he, granny," asked the girl anxiously,
"a w'ite man, or not?" Old Dinah pushed back the matted hair from
the wounded man's brow, and looked at the skin
beneath. It was fairer there, but yet of a decided
brown. She raised his hand pushed back the
tattered sleeve from his wrist and then she laid
his hand down gently. "Mos' lackly he 's a mulatter man f'om up de
country somewhar. He don' look lack dese yer
niggers roun' yere, ner yet lack a w'ite man. But
de po' boy 's in a bad fix, w'ateber he is, an' I
'spec's we bettah do w'at we kin fer 'im, an' w'en
he comes to he 'll tell us w'at he is - er w'at he
calls hisse'f. Hol' 'is head up, chile, an' I 'll po' a
drop er dis yer liquor down his th'oat; dat 'll bring
'im to quicker 'n anything e'se I knows." Cicely lifted the sick man's head, and Dinah
poured a few drops of the whiskey between his
teeth. He swallowed it readily enough. In a few
minutes he opened his eyes and stared blankly at
the two women. Cicely saw that his eyes were
large and black, and glistening with fever. "How you feelin', suh?" asked the old
woman.
There was no answer. "Is you feelin' bettah now?" The wounded man kept on staring blankly.
Suddenly he essayed to put his hand to his head,
gave a deep groan, and fell back again
unconscious. "He 's gone ag'in," said Dinah. "I reckon we'll
hefter tote 'im up ter de house and take keer
er 'im dere. W'ite folks would n't want ter fool
wid a nigger man, an' we doan know who his
folks is. He 's outer his head an' will be fer some
time yet, an' we can't tell nuthin' 'bout 'im tel he
comes ter his senses." Cicely lifted the wounded man by the arms and
shoulders. She was strong, with the strength of
youth and a sturdy race. The man was pitifully
emaciated; how much, the two women had not
suspected until they raised him. They had no
difficulty whatever, except for the awkwardness
of such a burden, in lifting him over the fence and
carrying him through the cornfield to the cabin. They laid him on Cicely's bed in the little
lean-to shed that formed a room separate from the
main apartment of the cabin. The old woman sent
Cicely to cook the dinner, while
she gave her own attention exclusively to the still
unconscious man. She brought water and washed
him as though he were a child. "Po' boy," she said, "he doan feel lack he 's
be'n eatin' nuff to feed a sparrer. He 'pears ter be
mos' starved ter def." She washed his wound more carefully, made
some lint, - the art was well known in the
sixties, - and dressed his wound with a fair
degree of skill. "Somebody must 'a' be'n tryin' ter put yo' light
out, chile," she muttered to herself as she adjusted
the bandage around his head. "A little higher er a
little lower, an' you would n' 'a' be'n yere ter tell
de tale. Dem clo's," she argued, lifting the tattered
garments she had removed from her patient,
"don' b'long 'roun' yere. Dat kinder weavin' come
f'om down to'ds Souf Ca'lina. I wish Needham
'u'd come erlong. He kin tell who dis man is, an'
all erbout 'im." She made a bowl of gruel, and fed it, drop by
drop, to the sick man. This roused him somewhat
from his stupor, but when Dinah thought he had
enough of the gruel, and stopped feeding him, he
closed his eyes again and relapsed into a heavy
sleep that was so
closely akin to unconsciousness as to be scarcely
distinguishable from it. When old Needham came home at noon, his
wife, who had been anxiously awaiting his return,
told him in a few words the story of Cicely's
discovery and of the subsequent events. Needham inspected the stranger with a
professional eye. He had been something of a
plantation doctor in his day, and was known far
and wide for his knowledge of simple remedies.
The negroes all around, as well as many of the
poorer white people, came to him for the
treatment of common ailments. "He's got a fevuh," he said, after feeling the
patient's pulse and laying his hand on his brow,
"an' we 'll hefter gib 'im some yarb tea an' nuss
'im tel de fevuh w'ars off. I 'spec'," he added, "dat
I knows whar dis boy come f'om. He 's mos'
lackly one er dem bright mulatters, f 'om
Robeson County - some of 'em call deyse'ves
Croatan Injins - w'at's been conscripted an' sent
ter wu'k on de fo'tifications down at Wimbleton
er some'er's er nuther, an' done 'scaped, and got
mos' killed gittin' erway, an' wuz n' none too well
fed befo', an' nigh 'bout starved ter def sence.
We 'll hafter hide dis man, er e'se we is lackly ter
git inter trouble ou'se'ves by harb'rin' 'im. Ef dey
ketch 'im yere, dey's liable ter take 'im out an'
shoot 'im - an' des ez lackly us too." Cicely was listening with bated breath. "Oh, gran'daddy," she cried with trembling
voice, "don' let 'em ketch 'im! Hide 'im
somewhar." "I reckon we'll leave 'im yere fer a day er so.
Ef he had come f'om roun' yere I'd be skeered
ter keep 'im, fer de w'ite folks 'u'd prob'ly be
lookin' fer 'im. But I knows ev'ybody w'at's be'n
conscripted fer ten miles 'roun', an' dis yere boy
don' b'long in dis neighborhood. W'en 'e gits so 'e
kin he'p 'isse'f we'll put 'im up in de lof' an' hide
'im till de Yankees come. Fer dey're comin' sho'.
I dremp' las' night dey wuz close ter han', and I
hears de w'ite folks talkin' ter deyse'ves 'bout it.
An' de time is comin' w'en de good Lawd gwine
ter set his people free, an' it ain' gwine ter be long,
nuther." Needham's prophecy proved true. In less than
a week the Confederate garrison evacuated the
arsenal in the neighboring town of Patesville,
blew up the buildings, destroyed
the ordnance and stores, and retreated across
the Cape Fear River, burning the river bridge
behind them, - two acts of war afterwards
unjustly attributed to General Sherman's army,
which followed close upon the heels of the
retreating Confederates. When there was no longer any fear for the
stranger's safety, no more pains were taken to
conceal him. His wound had healed rapidly, and
in a week he had been able with some help to
climb up the ladder into the loft. In all this time,
however, though apparently conscious, he had
said no word to any one, nor had he seemed to
comprehend a word that was spoken to him. Cicely had been his constant attendant. After
the first day, during which her granny had nursed
him, she had sat by his bedside, had fanned his
fevered brow, had held food and water and
medicine to his lips. When it was safe for him to
come down from the loft and sit in a chair under
a spreading oak, Cicely supported him until he
was strong enough to walk about the yard. When
his strength had increased sufficiently to permit of
greater exertion, she accompanied him on long
rambles in the fields and woods.
In spite of his gain in physical strength, the
newcomer changed very little in other respects.
For a long time he neither spoke nor smiled. To
questions put to him he simply gave no reply, but
looked at his questioner with the blank
unconsciousness of an infant. By and by he began
to recognize Cicely, and to smile at her approach.
The next step in returning consciousness was but
another manifestation of the same sentiment.
When Cicely would leave him he would look his
regret, and be restless and uneasy until she
returned. The family were at a loss what to call him. To
any inquiry as to his name he answered no more
than to other questions. "He come jes' befo' Sherman," said
Needham, after a few weeks, "lack John de
Baptis' befo' de Lawd. I reckon we bettah call
'im John." So they called him John. He soon learned the
name. As time went on Cicely found that he was
quick at learning things. She taught him to speak
her own negro English, which he pronounced with
absolute fidelity to her intonations; so that barring
the quality of his voice, his speech was an echo
of Cicely's own.
The summer wore away and the autumn
came. John and Cicely wandered in the woods
together and gathered walnuts, and chinquapins
and wild grapes. When harvest time came, they
worked in the fields side by side, - plucked the
corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried
peas from the yellow pea-vines. Cicely was a
phenomenal cotton-picker, and John
accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her
hours at a time, though occasionally he would
complain of his head, and sit under a tree and
rest part of the day while Cicely worked, the two
keeping one another always in sight. They did not have a great deal of intercourse
with other people. Young men came to the cabin
sometimes to see Cicely, but when they found her
entirely absorbed in the stranger they ceased their
visits. For a time Cicely kept him away, as much
as possible, from others, because she did not
wish them to see that there was anything wrong
about him. This was her motive at first, but after a
while she kept him to herself simply because she
was happier so. He was hers - hers alone. She
had found him, as Pharaoh's daughter had found
Moses in the bulrushes; she had
taught him to speak, to think, to love. She had
not taught him to remember; she would not have
wished him to; she would have been jealous of
any past to which he might have proved bound
by other ties. Her dream so far had come true.
She had found him, he loved her. The rest of it
would as surely follow, and that before long. For
dreams were serious things, and time had proved
hers to have been not a presage of misfortune,
but one of the beneficent visions that are sent, that
we may enjoy by anticipation the good things
that are in store for us. But a short interval of time elapsed after the
passage of the warlike host that swept through
North Carolina, until there appeared upon the
scene the vanguard of a second army, which
came to bring light and the fruits of liberty to a
land which slavery and the havoc of war had
brought to ruin. It is fashionable to assume that
those who undertook the political rehabilitation of
the Southern States merely rounded out the ruin
that the war had wrought - merely ploughed up
the desolate land and sowed it with salt. Perhaps
the gentler judgments of the future may recognize
that their task was a difficult one, and that wiser
and honester men might have failed as
egregiously. It may even, in time, be conceded
that some good came out of the carpet-bag
governments, as, for instance, the establishment
of a system of popular education in the former
slave States. Where it had been a crime to teach
people to read or write, a schoolhouse dotted
every hillside, and the State provided education
for rich and poor, for white and black alike. Let
us lay at least this token upon the grave of the
carpet-baggers. The evil they did lives after them,
and the statute of limitations does not seem to run
against it. It is but just that we should not forget
the good. Long, however, before the work of political
reconstruction had begun, a brigade of Yankee
schoolmasters and schoolma'ams had invaded
Dixie, and one of the latter had opened a
Freedman's Bureau School in the town of
Patesville, about four miles from Needham
Green's cabin on the neighboring sandhills. It had been quite a surprise to Miss Chandler's
Boston friends when she had announced
her intention of going South to teach the
freedmen. Rich, accomplished, beautiful, and a
social favorite, she was giving up the comforts
and luxuries of Northern life to go among hostile
strangers, where her associates would be mostly
ignorant negroes. Perhaps she might meet
occasionally an officer of some Federal garrison,
or a traveler from the North; but to all intents and
purposes her friends considered her as going into
voluntary exile. But heroism was not rare in those
days, and Martha Chandler was only one of the
great multitude whose hearts went out toward an
oppressed race, and who freely poured out their
talents, their money, their lives, - whatever God
had given them, - in the sublime and not unfruitful
effort to transform three millions of slaves into
intelligent freemen. Miss Chandler's friends knew,
too, that she had met a great sorrow, and more
than suspected that out of it had grown her
determination to go South. When Cicely Green heard that a school for
colored people had been opened at Patesville
she combed her hair, put on her Sunday frock
and such bits of finery as she possessed, and set
out for town early the next Monday morning.
There were many who came to learn the new
gospel of education, which was to be the cure for
all the freedmen's ills. The old and gray-haired,
the full-grown man and woman, the toddling
infant, - they came to acquire the new and
wonderful learning that was to make them the
equals of the white people. It was the teacher's
task, by no means an easy one, to select from this
incongruous mass the most promising material,
and to distribute among them the second-hand
books and clothing that were sent, largely by her
Boston friends, to aid her in her work; to find out
what they knew, to classify them by their
intelligence rather than by their knowledge, for
they were all lamentably ignorant. Some among
them were the children of parents who had been
free before the war, and of these some few could
read and one or two could write. One paragon,
who could repeat the multiplication table, was
immediately promoted to the position of pupil
teacher. Miss Chandler took a liking to the tall girl who
had come so far to sit under her instruction.
There was a fine, free air in her bearing, a
lightness in her step, a sparkle in her eye, that
spoke of good blood, - whether
fused by nature in its own alembic, out of material
despised and spurned of men, or whether some
obscure ancestral strain, the teacher could not tell.
The girl proved intelligent and learned rapidly,
indeed seemed almost feverishly anxious to learn.
She was quiet, and was, though utterly untrained,
instinctively polite, and profited from the first day
by the example of her teacher's quiet elegance.
The teacher dressed in simple black. When
Cicely came back to school the second day, she
had left off her glass beads and her red ribbon,
and had arranged her hair as nearly like the
teacher's as her skill and its quality would permit. The teacher was touched by these efforts at
imitation, and by the intense devotion Cicely soon
manifested toward her. It was not a sycophantic,
troublesome devotion, that made itself a burden
to its object. It found expression in little things
done rather than in any words the girl said. To the
degree that the attraction was mutual, Martha
recognized in it a sort of freemasonry of
temperament that drew them together in spite of
the differences between them. Martha felt
sometimes, in the vague way that one
speculates about the impossible, that if she were
brown, and had been brought up in North
Carolina, she would be like Cicely; and that if
Cicely's ancestors had come over in the
Mayflower, and Cicely had been reared on
Beacon Street, in the shadow of the State House
dome, Cicely would have been very much like
herself. Miss Chandler was lonely sometimes. Her
duties kept her occupied all day. On Sundays she
taught a Bible class in the school-room.
Correspondence with bureau officials and friends
at home furnished her with additional occupation.
At times, nevertheless, she felt a longing for the
company of women of her own race; but the
white ladies of the town did not call, even in the
most formal way, upon the Yankee school-teacher.
Miss Chandler was therefore fain to do
the best she could with such companionship as
was available. She took Cicely to her home
occasionally, and asked her once to stay all night.
Thinking, however, that she detected a reluctance
on the girl's part to remain away from home, she
did not repeat her invitation. Cicely, indeed, was filling a double rôle.
The learning acquired from Miss Chandler she
imparted to John at home. Every evening, by the
light of the pine-knots blazing on Needham's
ample hearth, she taught John to read the simple
words she had learned during the day. Why she
did not take him to school she had never asked
herself; there were several other pupils as old as
he seemed to be. Perhaps she still thought it
necessary to protect him from curious remark. He
worked with Needham by day, and she could see
him at night, and all of Saturdays and Sundays.
Perhaps it was the jealous selfishness of love. She
had found him; he was hers. In the spring, when
school was over, her granny had said that she
might marry him. Till then her dream would not yet
have come true, and she must keep him to herself.
And yet she did not wish him to lose this golden
key to the avenues of opportunity. She would not
take him to school, but she would teach him each
day all that she herself had learned. He was not
difficult to teach, but learned, indeed, with what
seemed to Cicely marvelous ease, - always,
however, by her lead, and never of his own
initiative. For while he could do a man's work, he
was in most things but a child,
without a child's curiosity. His love for Cicely
appeared the only thing for which he needed no
suggestion; and even that possessed an element
of childish dependence that would have seemed,
to minds trained to thoughtful observation,
infinitely pathetic. The spring came and cotton-planting time. The
children began to drop out of Miss Chandler's
school one by one, as their services were
required at home. Cicely was among those who
intended to remain in school until the term closed
with the "exhibition," in which she was assigned a
leading part. She had selected her recitation, or
"speech," from among half a dozen poems that her
teacher had suggested, and to memorizing it she
devoted considerable time and study. The
exhibition, as the first of its kind, was sure to be a
notable event. The parents and friends of the
children were invited to attend, and a colored
church, recently erected, - the largest available
building, - was secured as the place where the
exercises should take place. On the morning of the eventful day, uncle
Needham, assisted by John, harnessed the mule
to the two-wheeled cart, on which a
couple of splint-bottomed chairs were fastened to
accommodate Dinah and Cicely. John put on his
best clothes, - an ill-fitting suit of blue jeans, - a
round wool hat, a pair of coarse brogans, a
homespun shirt, and a bright blue necktie. Cicely
wore her best frock, a red ribbon at her throat,
another in her hair, and carried a bunch of
flowers in her hand. Uncle Needham and aunt
Dinah were also in holiday array. Needham and
John took their seats on opposite sides of the
cart-frame, with their feet dangling down, and thus
the equipage set out leisurely for the town. Cicely had long looked forward impatiently to
this day. She was going to marry John the next
week, and then her dream would have come
entirely true. But even this anticipated happiness
did not overshadow the importance of the
present occasion, which would be an epoch in
her life, a day of joy and triumph. She knew her
speech perfectly, and timidity was not one of her
weaknesses. She knew that the red ribbons set
off her dark beauty effectively, and that her dress
fitted neatly the curves of her shapely figure. She
confidently expected to win the
first prize, a large morocco-covered Bible,
offered by Miss Chandler for the best exercise. Cicely and her companions soon arrived at
Patesville. Their entrance into the church made
quite a sensation, for Cicely was not only an
acknowledged belle, but a general favorite, and to
John there attached a tinge of mystery which
inspired a respect not bestowed upon those who
had grown up in the neighborhood. Cicely
secured a seat in the front part of the church, next
to the aisle, in the place reserved for the pupils.
As the house was already partly filled by
townspeople when the party from the country
arrived, Needham and his wife and John were
forced to content themselves with places
somewhat in the rear of the room, from which
they could see and hear what took place on the
platform, but where they were not at all conspicuously
visible to those at the front of the church. The schoolmistress had not yet arrived, and
order was preserved in the audience by two of
the elder pupils, adorned with large rosettes of
red, white, and blue, who ushered the most
important visitors to the seats
reserved for them. A national flag was gracefully
draped over the platform, and under it hung a
lithograph of the Great Emancipator, for it was
thus these people thought of him. He had saved
the Union, but the Union had never meant
anything good to them. He had proclaimed liberty
to the captive, which meant all to them; and to
them he was and would ever be the Great
Emancipator. The schoolmistress came in at a rear door and
took her seat upon the platform. Martha was
dressed in white; for once she had laid aside the
sombre garb in which alone she had been seen
since her arrival at Patesville. She wore a yellow
rose at her throat, a bunch of jasmine in her belt.
A sense of responsibility for the success of the
exhibition had deepened the habitual seriousness
of her face, yet she greeted the audience with a
smile. "Don' Miss Chan'ler look sweet," whispered
the little girls to one another, devouring her
beauty with sparkling eyes, their lips parted over
a wealth of ivory. "De Lawd will bress dat chile," said one old
woman, in soliloquy. "I t'ank de good Marster I's
libbed ter see dis day."
Even envy could not hide its noisome head:
a pretty quadroon whispered to her neighbor: - "I don't b'liebe she's natch'ly ez white ez dat. I
'spec' she 's be'n powd'rin'! An' I know all dat
hair can't be her'n; she 's got on a switch, sho 's
you bawn." "You knows dat ain' so, Ma'y 'Liza Smif,"
rejoined the other, with a look of stern
disapproval; "you knows dat ain' so. You'd gib
yo' everlastin' soul 'f you wuz ez white ez Miss
Chan'ler, en yo' ha'r wuz ez long ez her'n." "By Jove, Maxwell!" exclaimed a young
officer, who belonged to the Federal garrison
stationed in the town, "but that girl is a beauty."
The speaker and a companion were in fatigue
uniform, and had merely dropped in for an hour
between garrison duty. The ushers had wished to
give them seats on the platform, but they had
declined, thinking that perhaps their presence
there might embarrass the teacher. They sought
rather to avoid observation by sitting behind a
pillar in the rear of the room, around which they
could see without attracting undue attention. "To think," the lieutenant went on, "of
that Junonian figure, those lustrous orbs, that
golden coronal, that flower of Northern
civilization, being wasted on these barbarians!"
The speaker uttered an exaggerated but
suppressed groan. His companion, a young man of clean-shaven
face and serious aspect, nodded assent, but
whispered reprovingly, - " 'Sh! some one will hear you. The exercises
are going to begin." When Miss Chandler stepped forward to
announce the hymn to be sung by the school as
the first exercise, every eye in the room was fixed
upon her, except John's, which saw only Cicely.
When the teacher had uttered a few words, he
looked up to her, and from that moment did not
take his eyes off Martha's face. After the singing, a little girl, dressed in white,
crossed by ribbons of red and blue, recited with
much spirit a patriotic poem. When Martha announced the third exercise,
John's face took on a more than usually animated
expression, and there was a perceptible
deepening of the troubled look in his eyes, never
entirely absent since Cicely had found him in the
woods.
A little yellow boy, with long curls, and a
frightened air, next ascended the platform. "Now, Jimmie, be a man, and speak right
out," whispered his teacher, tapping his arm
reassuringly with her fan as he passed her. Jimmie essayed to recite the lines so familiar to
a past generation of schoolchildren: - He ducked his head hurriedly in a futile
attempt at a bow; then, following instructions
previously given him, fixed his eyes upon a large
cardboard motto hanging on the rear wall of the
room, which admonished him in bright red letters
to and started off with assumed confidence - At this point, drawn by an irresistible impulse, his
eyes sought the level of the audience. Ah, fatal
blunder! He stammered, but with an effort raised
his eyes and began again:
Again his treacherous eyes fell, and his little
remaining self-possession utterly forsook him. He
made one more despairing effort: - and then, bursting into tears, turned and fled
amid a murmur of sympathy. Jimmie's inglorious retreat was covered by the
singing in chorus of "The Star-spangled Banner,"
after which Cicely Green came forward to recite
her poem. "By Jove, Maxwell!" whispered the young
officer, who was evidently a connoisseur of
female beauty, "that is n't bad for a bronze
Venus. I 'll tell you" - " 'Sh!" said the other. "Keep still." When Cicely finished her recitation, the young
officers began to applaud, but stopped suddenly
in some confusion as they realized that they were
the only ones in the audience so engaged. The
colored people had either not learned how to
express their approval in orthodox fashion, or
else their respect for the sacred character of the
edifice forbade any such demonstration. Their
enthusiasm found
vent, however, in a subdued murmur,
emphasized by numerous nods and winks and
suppressed exclamations. During the singing that
followed Cicely's recitation the two officers
quietly withdrew, their duties calling them away
at this hour. At the close of the exercises, a committee on
prizes met in the vestibule, and unanimously
decided that Cicely Green was entitled to the first
prize. Proudly erect, with sparkling eyes and
cheeks flushed with victory, Cicely advanced to
the platform to receive the coveted reward. As
she turned away, her eyes, shining with gratified
vanity, sought those of her lover. John sat bent slightly forward in an attitude of
strained attention; and Cicely's triumph lost half its
value when she saw that it was not at her, but at
Miss Chandler, that his look was directed.
Though she watched him thenceforward, not one
glance did he vouchsafe to his jealous sweetheart,
and never for an instant withdrew his eyes from
Martha, or relaxed the unnatural intentness of his
gaze. The imprisoned mind, stirred to unwonted
effort, was struggling for liberty; and from Martha
had come the first ray of outer light that had
penetrated its dungeon.
Before the audience was dismissed, the
teacher rose to bid her school farewell. Her
intention was to take a vacation of three months;
but what might happen in that time she did not
know, and there were duties at home of such
apparent urgency as to render her return to North
Carolina at least doubtful; so that in her own
heart her au revoir sounded very much like a
farewell. She spoke to them of the hopeful progress
they had made, and praised them for their eager
desire to learn. She told them of the serious
duties of life, and of the use they should make of
their acquirements. With prophetic finger she
pointed them to the upward way which they must
climb with patient feet to raise themselves out of
the depths. Then, an unusual thing with her, she spoke of
herself. Her heart was full; it was with difficulty
that she maintained her composure; for the faces
that confronted her were kindly faces, and not
critical, and some of them she had learned to
love right well. "I am going away from you, my children," she
said; "but before I go I want to tell you how I
came to be in North Carolina; so that if I have
been able to do anything here among
you for which you might feel inclined, in your
good nature, to thank me, you may thank not me
alone, but another who came before me, and
whose work I have but taken up where he laid it
down. I had a friend, - a dear friend, - why
should I be ashamed to say it? - a lover, to whom
I was to be married, - as I hope all you girls may
some day be happily married. His country needed
him, and I gave him up. He came to fight for the
Union and for Freedom, for he believed that all
men are brothers. He did not come back again
- he gave up his life for you. Could I do less than
he? I came to the land that he sanctified by his
death, and I have tried in my weak way to tend
the plant he watered with his blood, and which, in
the fullness of time, will blossom forth into the
perfect flower of liberty." She could say no more, and as the whole
audience thrilled in sympathy with her emotion,
there was a hoarse cry from the men's side of the
room, and John forced his way to the aisle and
rushed forward to the platform. "Martha! Martha!" "Arthur! O Arthur!" Pent-up love burst the flood-gates of despair
and oblivion, and caught these two young
hearts in its torrent. Captain Arthur Carey, of the
1st Massachusetts, long since reported missing,
and mourned as dead, was restored to reason
and to his world. It seemed to him but yesterday that he had
escaped from the Confederate prison at
Salisbury; that in an encounter with a guard he
had received a wound in the head; that he had
wandered on in the woods, keeping himself alive
by means of wild berries, with now and then a
piece of bread or a potato from a friendly negro.
It seemed but the night before that he had laid
himself down, tortured with fever, weak from loss
of blood, and with no hope that he would ever
rise again. From that moment his memory of the
past was a blank until he recognized Martha on
the platform and took up again the thread of his
former existence where it had been broken off. And Cicely? Well, there is often another
woman, and Cicely, all unwittingly to Carey or to
Martha, had been the other woman. For, after
all, her beautiful dream had been one of the kind
that go by contraries.
WHEN it is said that it was done to please a
woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said
to explain anything; for what a man will not do to
please a woman is yet to be discovered.
Nevertheless, it might be well to state a few
preliminary facts to make it clear why young
Dick Owens tried to run one of his father's negro
men off to Canada. In the early fifties, when the growth of anti-slavery
sentiment and the constant drain of fugitive slaves
into the North had so alarmed the slaveholders of the
border States as to lead to the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law, a young white man from Ohio,
moved by compassion for the sufferings of a
certain bondman who happened to have a "hard master,"
essayed to help the slave to freedom. The attempt
was discovered and frustrated; the abductor was
tried and convicted for slave-stealing, and sentenced
to a term of imprisonment
in the penitentiary. His death, after the
expiration of only a small part of the sentence,
from cholera contracted while nursing stricken
fellow prisoners, lent to the case a melancholy
interest that made it famous in anti-slavery
annals. Dick Owens had attended the trial. He was a
youth of about twenty-two, intelligent, handsome,
and amiable, but extremely indolent, in a graceful
and gentlemanly way; or, as old Judge Fenderson
put it more than once, he was lazy as the
Devil, - a mere figure of speech, of course, and
not one that did justice to the Enemy of Mankind.
When asked why he never did anything serious,
Dick would good-naturedly reply, with a
well-modulated drawl, that he did n't have to. His
father was rich; there was but one other child, an
unmarried daughter, who because of poor health
would probably never marry, and Dick was
therefore heir presumptive to a large estate.
Wealth or social position he did not need to seek,
for he was born to both. Charity Lomax had
shamed him into studying law, but
notwithstanding an hour or so a day spent at old
Judge Fenderson's office, he did not make
remarkable headway in his legal studies.
"What Dick needs," said the judge, who was
fond of tropes, as became a scholar, and of
horses, as was befitting a Kentuckian, "is the
whip of necessity, or the spur of ambition. If he
had either, he would soon need the snaffle to
hold him back." But all Dick required, in fact, to prompt him to
the most remarkable thing he accomplished
before he was twenty-five, was a mere
suggestion from Charity Lomax. The story was
never really known to but two persons until after
the war, when it came out because it was a good
story and there was no particular reason for its
concealment. Young Owens had attended the trial of this
slave-stealer, or martyr, - either or both, - and,
when it was over, had gone to call on Charity
Lomax, and, while they sat on the veranda after
sundown, had told her all about the trial. He was
a good talker, as his career in later years
disclosed, and described the proceedings very
graphically. "I confess," he admitted, "that while my
principles were against the prisoner, my
sympathies were on his side. It appeared that he
was of good family, and that he had an old father
and mother, respectable people, dependent
upon him for support and comfort in their
declining years. He had been led into the matter
by pity for a negro whose master ought to have
been run out of the county long ago for abusing
his slaves. If it had been merely a question of old
Sam Briggs's negro, nobody would have cared
anything about it. But father and the rest of them
stood on the principle of the thing, and told the
judge so, and the fellow was sentenced to three
years in the penitentiary." Miss Lomax had listened with lively interest. "I 've always hated old Sam Briggs," she said
emphatically, "ever since the time he broke a
negro's leg with a piece of cordwood. When I
hear of a cruel deed it makes the Quaker blood
that came from my grandmother assert itself.
Personally I wish that all Sam Briggs's negroes
would run away. As for the young man, I regard
him as a hero. He dared something for humanity.
I could love a man who would take such chances
for the sake of others." "Could you love me, Charity, if I did
something heroic?" "You never will, Dick. You're too lazy
for any use. You'll never do anything harder than
playing cards or fox-hunting." "Oh, come now, sweetheart! I've been
courting you for a year, and it's the hardest work
imaginable. Are you never going to love me?"
he pleaded. His hand sought hers, but she drew it back
beyond his reach. "I'll never love you, Dick Owens, until you
have done something. When that time comes, I'll
think about it." "But it takes so long to do anything worth
mentioning, and I don't want to wait. One must
read two years to become a lawyer, and work
five more to make a reputation. We shall both be
gray by then." "Oh, I don't know," she rejoined. "It does n't
require a lifetime for a man to prove that he is a
man. This one did something, or at least tried to." "Well, I'm willing to attempt as much as any
other man. What do you want me to do,
sweetheart? Give me a test." "Oh, dear me!" said Charity, "I don't care
what you do, so you do something. Really,
come to think of it, why should I care whether
you do anything or not?"
"I'm sure I don't know why you should,
Charity," rejoined Dick humbly, "for I 'm aware
that I 'm not worthy of it." "Except that I do hate," she added, relenting
slightly, "to see a really clever man so utterly lazy
and good for nothing." "Thank you, my dear; a word of praise from
you has sharpened my wits already. I have an
idea! Will you love me if I run a negro off to
Canada?" "What nonsense!" said Charity scornfully.
"You must be losing your wits. Steal another
man's slave, indeed, while your father owns a
hundred!" "Oh, there'll be no trouble about that,"
responded Dick lightly; "I'll run off one of the
old man's; we 've got too many anyway. It may
not be quite as difficult as the other man found it,
but it will be just as unlawful, and will
demonstrate what I am capable of." "Seeing 's believing," replied Charity. "Of
course, what you are talking about now is merely
absurd. I'm going away for three weeks, to visit
my aunt in Tennessee. If you're able to tell me,
when I return, that you 've done something to
prove your quality, I'll - well, you may come and
tell me about it."
Young Owens got up about nine o'clock next
morning, and while making his toilet put some
questions to his personal attendant, a rather
bright looking young mulatto of about his own
age. "Tom," said Dick. "Yas, Mars Dick," responded the servant. "I 'm going on a trip North. Would you like to
go with me?" Now, if there was anything that Tom would
have liked to make, it was a trip North. It was
something he had long contemplated in the
abstract, but had never been able to muster up
sufficient courage to attempt in the concrete. He
was prudent enough, however, to dissemble his
feelings. "I would n't min' it, Mars Dick, ez long ez
you'd take keer er me an' fetch me home all
right." Tom's eyes belied his words, however, and his
young master felt well assured that Tom needed
only a good opportunity to make him run away.
Having a comfortable home, and a dismal
prospect in case of failure, Tom was not likely to
take any desperate chances; but
young Owens was satisfied that in a free State
but little persuasion would be required to lead
Tom astray. With a very logical and characteristic
desire to gain his end with the least necessary
expenditure of effort, he decided to take Tom
with him, if his father did not object. Colonel Owens had left the house when Dick
went to breakfast, so Dick did not see his father
till luncheon. "Father," he remarked casually to the colonel,
over the fried chicken, "I'm feeling a trifle run
down. I imagine my health would be improved
somewhat by a little travel and change of scene." "Why don't you take a trip North?"
suggested his father. The colonel added to
paternal affection a considerable respect for his
son as the heir of a large estate. He himself had
been "raised" in comparative poverty, and had
laid the foundations of his fortune by hard work;
and while he despised the ladder by which he
had climbed, he could not entirely forget it, and
unconsciously manifested, in his intercourse with
his son, some of the poor man's deference
toward the wealthy and well-born.
"I think I'll adopt your suggestion, sir," replied
the son, "and run up to New York; and after
I've been there awhile I may go on to Boston for
a week or so. I've never been there, you know." "There are some matters you can talk over with
my factor in New York," rejoined the colonel,
"and while you are up there among the Yankees, I
hope you'll keep your eyes and ears open to find
out what the rascally abolitionists are saying and
doing. They're becoming altogether too active for
our comfort, and entirely too many ungrateful
niggers are running away. I hope the conviction of
that fellow yesterday may discourage the rest of
the breed. I'd just like to catch any one trying to
run off one of my darkeys. He 'd get short shrift; I
don't think any Court would have a chance to try
him." "They are a pestiferous lot," assented Dick,
"and dangerous to our institutions. But say, father,
if I go North I shall want to take Tom with me." Now, the colonel, while a very indulgent
father, had pronounced views on the subject of
negroes, having studied them, as he often said,
for a great many years, and, as he
asserted oftener still, understanding them
perfectly. It is scarcely worth while to say,
either, that he valued more highly than if he had
inherited them the slaves he had toiled and
schemed for. "I don't think it safe to take Tom up North,"
he declared, with promptness and decision.
"He's a good enough boy, but too smart to trust
among those low-down abolitionists. I strongly
suspect him of having learned to read, though I
can't imagine how. I saw him with a newspaper
the other day, and while he pretended to be
looking at a woodcut, I'm almost sure he was
reading the paper. I think it by no means safe to
take him." Dick did not insist, because he knew it was
useless. The colonel would have obliged his son
in any other matter, but his negroes were the
outward and visible sign of his wealth and
station, and therefore sacred to him. "Whom do you think it safe to take?" asked
Dick. "I suppose I'll have to have a
body-servant." "What's the matter with Grandison?"
suggested the colonel. "He 's handy enough, and
I reckon we can trust him. He's too fond of good
eating, to risk losing his regular
meals; besides, he's sweet on your mother's
maid, Betty, and I 've promised to let 'em get
married before long. I'll have Grandison up,
and we'll talk to him. Here, you boy Jack," called
the colonel to a yellow youth in the next room
who was catching flies and pulling their wings off
to pass the time, "go down to the barn and tell
Grandison to come here." "Grandison," said the colonel, when the negro
stood before him, hat in hand. "Yas, marster." "Have n't I always treated you right?" "Yas, marster." "Haven't you always got all you wanted to
eat?" "Yas, marster." "And as much whiskey and tobacco as was
good for you, Grandison?" "Y-a-s, marster." "I should just like to know, Grandison,
whether you don't think yourself a great deal
better off than those poor free negroes down by
the plank road, with no kind master to look after
them and no mistress to give them medicine
when they're sick and - and" - "Well, I sh'd jes' reckon I is better off, suh,
dan dem low-down free niggers, suh!
Ef anybody ax 'em who dey b'long ter, dey has
ter say nobody, er e'se lie erbout it. Anybody ax
me who I b'longs ter, I ain' got no 'casion ter be
shame' ter tell 'em, no, suh, 'deed I ain', suh!" The colonel was beaming. This was true
gratitude, and his feudal heart thrilled at such
appreciative homage. What cold-blooded,
heartless monsters they were who would break
up this blissful relationship of kindly protection on
the one hand, of wise subordination and loyal
dependence on the other! The colonel always
became indignant at the mere thought of such
wickedness. "Grandison," the colonel continued, "your
young master Dick is going North for a few
weeks, and I am thinking of letting him take you
along. I shall send you on this trip, Grandison, in
order that you may take care of your young
master. He will need some one to wait on him,
and no one can ever do it so well as one of the
boys brought up with him on the old plantation. I
am going to trust him in your hands, and I'm sure
you'll do your duty faithfully, and bring him back
home safe and sound - to old Kentucky."
Grandison grinned. "Oh yas, marster, I'll take
keer er young Mars Dick." "I want to warn you, though, Grandison,"
continued the colonel impressively, "against these
cussed abolitionists, who try to entice servants
from their comfortable homes and their indulgent
masters, from the blue skies, the green fields, and
the warm sunlight of their southern home, and
send them away off yonder to Canada, a dreary
country, where the woods are full of wildcats and
wolves and bears, where the snow lies up to the
eaves of the houses for six months of the year,
and the cold is so severe that it freezes your
breath and curdles your blood; and where, when
runaway niggers get sick and can't work, they are
turned out to starve and die, unloved and
uncared for. I reckon, Grandison, that you have
too much sense to permit yourself to be led
astray by any such foolish and wicked people." "'Deed, suh, I would n' low none er dem
cussed, low-down abolitioners ter come nigh
me, suh, I 'd - I 'd - would I be 'lowed ter hit
'em, suh?" "Certainly, Grandison," replied the colonel,
chuckling, "hit 'em as hard as you can. I
reckon they 'd rather like it. Begad, I believe
they would! It would serve 'em right to be hit by
a nigger!" "Er ef I did n't hit 'em, suh," continued
Grandison reflectively, "I 'd tell Mars Dick, en
he 'd fix 'em. He 'd smash de face off'n 'em, suh,
I jes' knows he would." "Oh yes, Grandison, your young master will
protect you. You need fear no harm while he is
near." "Dey won't try ter steal me, will dey, marster?"
asked the negro, with sudden alarm. "I don't know, Grandison," replied the
colonel, lighting a fresh cigar. "They're a
desperate set of lunatics, and there 's no telling
what they may resort to. But if you stick close to
your young master, and remember always that he
is your best friend, and understands your real
needs, and has your true interests at heart, and if
you will be careful to avoid strangers who try to
talk to you, you 'll stand a fair chance of getting
back to your home and your friends. And if you
please your master Dick, he 'll buy you a present,
and a string of beads for Betty to wear when you
and she get married in the fall."
"Thanky, marster, thanky, suh," replied
Grandison, oozing gratitude at every pore; "you
is a good marster, to be sho', suh; yas, 'deed
you is. You kin jes' bet me and Mars Dick gwine
git 'long jes' lack I wuz own boy ter Mars Dick.
En it won't be my fault ef he don' want me fer his
boy all de time, w'en we come back home ag'in." "All right, Grandison, you may go now. You
need n't work any more to-day, and here's a
piece of tobacco for you off my own plug." "Thanky, marster, thanky, marster! You is de
bes' marster any nigger ever had in dis worl'."
And Grandison bowed and scraped and
disappeared round the corner, his jaws closing
around a large section of the colonel's best
tobacco. "You may take Grandison," said the colonel to
his son. "I allow he's abolitionist-proof." Richard Owens, Esq., and servant, from
Kentucky, registered at the fashionable New
York hostelry for Southerners in those days, a
hotel where an atmosphere congenial to
Southern institutions was sedulously maintained.
But there were negro waiters in the dining-room,
and mulatto bell-boys, and Dick had no doubt
that Grandison, with the native gregariousness
and garrulousness of his race, would foregather
and palaver with them sooner or later, and Dick
hoped that they would speedily inoculate him with
the virus of freedom. For it was not Dick's
intention to say anything to his servant about his
plan to free him, for obvious reasons. To mention
one of them, if Grandison should go away, and by
legal process be recaptured, his young master's
part in the matter would doubtless become
known, which would be embarrassing to Dick, to
say the least. If, on the other hand, he should
merely give Grandison sufficient latitude, he had
no doubt he would eventually lose him. For while
not exactly skeptical about Grandison's perfervid
loyalty, Dick had been a somewhat keen
observer of human nature, in his own indolent
way, and based his expectations upon the force
of the example and argument that his servant
could scarcely fail to encounter. Grandison should
have a fair chance to become free by his own
initiative; if it should become necessary to
adopt other measures to get rid of him, it would
be time enough to act when the necessity arose;
and Dick Owens was not the youth to take
needless trouble. The young master renewed some
acquaintances and made others, and spent a
week or two very pleasantly in the best society of
the metropolis, easily accessible to a wealthy,
well-bred young Southerner, with proper
introductions. Young women smiled on him, and
young men of convivial habits pressed their
hospitalities; but the memory of Charity's sweet,
strong face and clear blue eyes made him proof
against the blandishments of the one sex and the
persuasions of the other. Meanwhile he kept
Grandison supplied with pocket-money, and left
him mainly to his own devices. Every night when
Dick came in he hoped he might have to wait
upon himself, and every morning he looked
forward with pleasure to the prospect of making
his toilet unaided. His hopes, however, were
doomed to disappointment, for every night when
he came in Grandison was on hand with a
bootjack, and a nightcap mixed for his young
master as the colonel had taught him to mix it,
and every morning Grandison
appeared with his master's boots blacked and
his clothes brushed, and laid his linen out for the
day. "Grandison," said Dick one morning, after
finishing his toilet, "this is the chance of your life
to go around among your own people and see
how they live. Have you met any of them?" "Yas, suh, I's seen some of 'em. But I don'
keer nuffin fer 'em, suh, Dey 're diffe'nt f'm de
niggers down ou' way. Dey 'lows dey 're free, but
dey ain' got sense 'nuff ter know dey ain' half as
well off as dey would be down Souf, whar
dey 'd be 'preciated." When two weeks had passed without any
apparent effect of evil example upon Grandison,
Dick resolved to go on to Boston, where he
thought the atmosphere might prove more
favorable to his ends. After he had been at the
Revere House for a day or two without losing
Grandison, he decided upon slightly different
tactics. Having ascertained from a city directory the
addresses of several well-known abolitionists, he
wrote them each a letter something like this: -
DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER: - A wicked slaveholder from Kentucky,
stopping at the Revere House, has dared to insult
the liberty-loving people of Boston by bringing
his slave into their midst. Shall this be tolerated?
Or shall steps be taken in the name of liberty to
rescue a fellow-man from bondage? For obvious
reasons I can only sign myself, A FRIEND OF HUMANITY. That his letter might have an opportunity to
prove effective, Dick made it a point to send
Grandison away from the hotel on various
errands. On one of these occasions Dick
watched him for quite a distance down the street.
Grandison had scarcely left the hotel when a
long-haired, sharp-featured man came out behind him,
followed him, soon overtook him, and kept along
beside him until they turned the next corner.
Dick's hopes were roused by this spectacle, but
sank correspondingly when Grandison returned
to the hotel. As Grandison said nothing about the
encounter, Dick hoped there might be some
self-consciousness behind this unexpected
reticence, the results of which might develop later on.
But Grandison was on hand again when his
master came back to the hotel at night, and was
in attendance again in the morning, with hot
water, to assist at his master's toilet. Dick sent
him on further errands from day to day, and upon
one occasion came squarely up to him - inadvertently
of course - while Grandison was engaged in
conversation with a young white man
in clerical garb. When Grandison saw Dick
approaching, he edged away from the preacher
and hastened toward his master, with a very
evident expression of relief upon his countenance. "Mars Dick," he said, "dese yer abolitioners
is jes' pesterin' de life out er me tryin' ter git me
ter run away. I don' pay no 'tention ter 'em, but
dey riles me so sometimes dat I'm feared I'll hit
some of 'em some er dese days, an' dat mought
git me inter trouble. I ain' said nuffin' ter you 'bout
it, Mars Dick, fer I did n' wanter 'sturb yo' min';
but I don' like it, suh; no, suh, I don'! Is we
gwine back home 'fo' long, Mars Dick?" "We'll be going back soon enough," replied
Dick somewhat shortly, while he inwardly cursed
the stupidity of a slave who could be free and
would not, and registered
a secret vow that if he were unable to get rid of
Grandison without assassinating him, and were
therefore compelled to take him back to
Kentucky, he would see that Grandison got a
taste of an article of slavery that would make him
regret his wasted opportunities. Meanwhile he
determined to tempt his servant yet more
strongly. "Grandison," he said next morning, "I 'm
going away for a day or two, but I shall leave
you here. I shall lock up a hundred dollars in this
drawer and give you the key. If you need any of
it, use it and enjoy yourself, - spend it all if you
like, - for this is probably the last chance you'll
have for some time to be in a free State, and
you 'd better enjoy your liberty while you may." When he came back a couple of days later
and found the faithful Grandison at his post, and
the hundred dollars intact, Dick felt seriously
annoyed. His vexation was increased by the fact
that he could not express his feelings adequately.
He did not even scold Grandison; how could he,
indeed, find fault with one who so sensibly
recognized his true place in the economy of
civilization, and kept it with such touching
fidelity?
"I can't say a thing to him," groaned Dick. "He
deserves a leather medal, made out of his own
hide tanned. I reckon I'll write to father and let
him know what a model servant he has given
me." He wrote his father a letter which made the
colonel swell with pride and pleasure. "I really
think," the colonel observed to one of his friends,
"that Dick ought to have the nigger interviewed
by the Boston papers, so that they may see how
contented and happy our darkeys really are." Dick also wrote a long letter to Charity
Lomax, in which he said, among many other
things, that if she knew how hard he was
working, and under what difficulties, to
accomplish something serious for her sake, she
would no longer keep him in suspense, but
overwhelm him with love and admiration. Having thus exhausted without result the more
obvious methods of getting rid of Grandison, and
diplomacy having also proved a failure, Dick was
forced to consider more radical measures. Of
course he might run away himself, and abandon
Grandison, but this would be merely to leave him
in the United States, where he was still a slave, and
where, with his notions of loyalty, he would
speedily be reclaimed. It was necessary, in order
to accomplish the purpose of his trip to the
North, to leave Grandison permanently in
Canada, where he would be legally free. "I might extend my trip to Canada," he
reflected, "but that would be too palpable. I
have it! I'll visit Niagara Falls on the way home,
and lose him on the Canada side. When he once
realizes that he is actually free, I'll warrant that
he'll stay." So the next day saw them westward bound,
and in due course of time, by the somewhat slow
conveyances of the period, they found
themselves at Niagara. Dick walked and drove
about the Falls for several days, taking Grandison
along with him on most occasions. One morning
they stood on the Canadian side, watching the
wild whirl of the waters below them. "Grandison," said Dick, raising his voice
above the roar of the cataract, "do you know
where you are now?" "I 's wid you, Mars Dick; dat's all I keers." "You are now in Canada, Grandison, where
your people go when they run away from
their masters. If you wished, Grandison, you
might walk away from me this very minute, and I
could not lay my hand upon you to take you
back." Grandison looked around uneasily. "Let's go back ober de ribber, Mars Dick. I's
feared I'll lose you ovuh heah, an' den I won'
hab no marster, an' won't nebber be able to git
back home no mo'." Discouraged, but not yet hopeless, Dick said,
a few minutes later, - "Grandison, I 'm going up the road a bit, to
the inn over yonder. You stay here until I return.
I'll not be gone a great while." Grandison's eyes opened wide and he looked
somewhat fearful. "Is dey any er dem dadblasted
abolitioners roun' heah, Mars Dick?" "I don't imagine that there are," replied his
master, hoping there might be. "But I 'm not
afraid of yourrunning away, Grandison. I only
wish I were," he added to himself. Dick walked leisurely down the road to
where the whitewashed inn, built of stone, with
true British solidity, loomed up through the trees
by the roadside. Arrived there he
ordered a glass of ale and a sandwich, and took
a seat at a table by a window, from which he
could see Grandison in the distance. For a while
he hoped that the seed he had sown might have
fallen on fertile ground, and that Grandison,
relieved from the restraining power of a master's
eye, and finding himself in a free country, might
get up and walk away; but the hope was vain, for
Grandison remained faithfully at his post, awaiting
his master's return. He had seated himself on a
broad flat stone, and, turning his eyes away from
the grand and awe-inspiring spectacle that lay
close at hand, was looking anxiously toward the
inn where his master sat cursing his ill-timed
fidelity. By and by a girl came into the room to serve
his order, and Dick very naturally glanced at her;
and as she was young and pretty and remained in
attendance, it was some minutes before he
looked for Grandison. When he did so his faithful
servant had disappeared. To pay his reckoning and go away without the
change was a matter quickly accomplished.
Retracing his footsteps toward the Falls, he saw,
to his great disgust, as he
approached the spot where he had left Grandison,
the familiar form of his servant stretched out on
the ground, his face to the sun, his mouth open,
sleeping the time away, oblivious alike to the
grandeur of the scenery, the thunderous roar of
the cataract, or the insidious voice of sentiment. "Grandison," soliloquized his master, as he
stood gazing down at his ebony encumbrance,
"I do not deserve to be an American citizen; I
ought not to have the advantages I possess over
you; and I certainly am not worthy of Charity
Lomax, if I am not smart enough to get rid of
you. I have an idea! You shall yet be free, and I
will be the instrument of your deliverance. Sleep
on, faithful and affectionate servitor, and dream
of the blue grass and the bright skies of old
Kentucky, for it is only in your dreams that you
will ever see them again!" Dick retraced his footsteps towards the inn.
The young woman chanced to look out of the
window and saw the handsome young gentleman
she had waited on a few minutes before,
standing in the road a short distance away,
apparently engaged in earnest conversation with
a colored man employed as hostler
for the inn. She thought she saw something pass
from the white man to the other, but at that
moment her duties called her away from the
window, and when she looked out again the
young gentleman had disappeared, and the
hostler, with two other young men of the
neighborhood, one white and one colored, were
walking rapidly towards the Falls. Dick made the journey homeward alone, and
as rapidly as the conveyances of the day would
permit. As he drew near home his conduct in
going back without Grandison took on a more
serious aspect than it had borne at any previous
time, and although he had prepared the colonel
by a letter sent several days ahead, there was still
the prospect of a bad quarter of an hour with
him; not, indeed, that his father would upbraid
him, but he was likely to make searching
inquiries. And notwithstanding the vein of quiet
recklessness that had carried Dick through his
preposterous scheme, he was a very poor liar,
having rarely had occasion or inclination to tell
anything but the truth.
Any reluctance to meet his father was more than
offset, however, by a stronger force drawing him
homeward, for Charity Lomax must long since
have returned from her visit to her aunt in
Tennessee. Dick got off easier than he had expected. He
told a straight story, and a truthful one, so far as
it went. The colonel raged at first, but rage soon
subsided into anger, and anger moderated into
annoyance, and annoyance into a sort of
garrulous sense of injury. The colonel thought he
had been hardly used; he had trusted this negro,
and he had broken faith. Yet, after all, he did not
blame Grandison so much as he did the
abolitionists, who were undoubtedly at the
bottom of it. As for Charity Lomax, Dick told her,
privately of course, that he had run his father's
man, Grandison, off to Canada, and left him
there. "Oh, Dick," she had said with shuddering
alarm, "what have you done? If they knew it
they'd send you to the penitentiary, like they did
that Yankee." "But they don't know it," he had replied
seriously; adding, with an injured tone, "you
don't seem to appreciate my heroism like you
did that of the Yankee; perhaps it's because I
was n't caught and sent to the penitentiary. I
thought you wanted me to do it." "Why, Dick Owens!" she exclaimed. "You
know I never dreamed of any such outrageous
proceeding. "But I presume I'll have to marry you," she
concluded, after some insistence on Dick's part,
"if only to take care of you. You are too
reckless for anything; and a man who goes
chasing all over the North, being entertained by
New York and Boston society and having
negroes to throw away, needs some one to look
after him." "It's a most remarkable thing," replied Dick
fervently, "that your views correspond exactly
with my profoundest convictions. It proves
beyond question that we were made for one
another." They were married three weeks later. As
each of them had just returned from a journey,
they spent their honeymoon at home. A week after the wedding they were seated,
one afternoon, on the piazza of the colonel's
house, where Dick had taken his bride, when a
negro from the yard ran down the lane and threw
open the big gate for the colonel's buggy to
enter. The colonel was not alone. Beside him,
ragged and travel-stained, bowed with
weariness, and upon his face a haggard look that
told of hardship and privation, sat the lost
Grandison. The colonel alighted at the steps. "Take the lines, Tom," he said to the man who
had opened the gate, "and drive round to the
barn. Help Grandison down, - poor devil, he 's
so stiff he can hardly move! - and get a tub of
water and wash him and rub him down, and feed
him, and give him a big drink of whiskey, and
then let him come round and see his young
master and his new mistress." The colonel's face wore an expression
compounded of joy and indignation, - joy at the
restoration of a valuable piece of property;
indignation for reasons he proceeded to state. "It 's astounding, the depths of depravity the
human heart is capable of! I was coming along
the road three miles away, when I heard some
one call me from the roadside.
I pulled up the mare, and who should come out
of the woods but Grandison. The poor nigger
could hardly crawl along, with the help of a
broken limb. I was never more astonished in my
life. You could have knocked me down with a
feather. He seemed pretty far gone, - he could
hardly talk above a whisper, - and I had to give
him a mouthful of whiskey to brace him up so he
could tell his story. It's just as I thought from the
beginning, Dick; Grandison had no notion of
running away; he knew when he was well off,
and where his friends were. All the persuasions
of abolition liars and runaway niggers did not
move him. But the desperation of those fanatics
knew no bounds; their guilty consciences gave
them no rest. They got the notion somehow that
Grandison belonged to a nigger-catcher, and had
been brought North as a spy to help capture
ungrateful runaway servants. They actually
kidnaped him - just think of it! - and gagged
him and bound him and threw him rudely into a
wagon, and carried him into the gloomy depths
of a Canadian forest, and locked him in a lonely
hut, and fed him on bread and water for three
weeks. One of the
scoundrels wanted to kill him, and persuaded the
others that it ought to be done; but they got to
quarreling about how they should do it, and
before they had their minds made up Grandison
escaped, and, keeping his back steadily to the
North Star, made his way, after suffering
incredible hardships, back to the old plantation,
back to his master, his friends, and his home.
Why, it's as good as one of Scott's novels! Mr.
Simms or some other one of our Southern
authors ought to write it up." "Don't you think, sir," suggested Dick, who
had calmly smoked his cigar throughout the
colonel's animated recital, "that that kidnaping
yarn sounds a little improbable? Is n't there
some more likely explanation?" "Nonsense, Dick; it's the gospel truth! Those
infernal abolitionists are capable of
anything - everything! Just think of their locking
the poor, faithful nigger up, beating him, kicking
him, depriving him of his liberty, keeping him on
bread and water for three long, lonesome weeks,
and he all the time pining for the old plantation!" There were almost tears in the colonel's eyes
at the picture of Grandison's sufferings
that he conjured up. Dick still professed to be
slightly skeptical, and met Charity's severely
questioning eye with bland unconsciousness. The colonel killed the fatted calf for Grandison,
and for two or three weeks the returned
wanderer's life was a slave's dream of pleasure.
His fame spread throughout the county, and the
colonel gave him a permanent place among the
house servants, where he could always have him
conveniently at hand to relate his adventures to
admiring visitors. About three weeks after Grandison's return
the colonel's faith in sable humanity was
rudely shaken, and its foundations almost
broken up. He came near losing his belief
in the fidelity of the negro to his master, -
the servile virtue most highly prized and
most sedulously cultivated by the colonel and
his kind. One Monday morning Grandison
was missing. And not only Grandison, but
his wife, Betty the maid; his mother, aunt
Eunice; his father, uncle Ike; his brothers,
Tom and John, and his little sister Elsie,
were likewise absent from the plantation;
and a hurried search and inquiry in the
neighborhood resulted in no information as to
their whereabouts. So much valuable property
could not be lost without an effort to recover it,
and the wholesale nature of the transaction
carried consternation to the hearts of those whose
ledgers were chiefly bound in black. Extremely
energetic measures were taken by the colonel and
his friends. The fugitives were traced, and
followed from point to point, on their northward
run through Ohio. Several times the hunters were
close upon their heels, but the magnitude of the
escaping party begot unusual vigilance on the part
of those who sympathized with the fugitives, and
strangely enough, the underground railroad
seemed to have had its tracks cleared and signals
set for this particular train. Once, twice, the
colonel thought he had them, but they slipped
through his fingers. One last glimpse he caught of his vanishing
property, as he stood, accompanied by a United
States marshal, on a wharf at a port on the south
shore of Lake Erie. On the stern of a small
steamboat which was receding rapidly from the
wharf, with her nose pointing toward
Canada, there stood a group of familiar dark
faces, and the look they cast backward was not
one of longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. The
colonel saw Grandison point him out to one of
the crew of the vessel, who waved his hand
derisively toward the colonel. The latter shook
his fist impotently - and the incident was closed.
UNCLE WELLINGTON BRABOY was so
deeply absorbed in thought as he walked slowly
homeward from the weekly meeting of the Union
League, that he let his pipe go out, a fact of
which he remained oblivious until he had reached
the little frame house in the suburbs of Patesville,
where he lived with aunt Milly, his wife. On this
particular occasion the club had been addressed
by a visiting brother from the North, Professor
Patterson, a tall, well-formed mulatto, who wore
a perfectly fitting suit of broadcloth, a shiny silk
hat, and linen of dazzling whiteness, - in short, a
gentleman of such distinguished appearance that
the doors and windows of the offices and stores
on Front Street were filled with curious observers
as he passed through that thoroughfare in the
early part of the day. This polished stranger was
a traveling organizer of Masonic lodges, but he also
claimed to be a high officer in the Union League,
and had been invited to lecture before the local
chapter of that organization at Patesville. The lecture had been largely attended, and
uncle Wellington Braboy had occupied a seat
just in front of the platform. The subject of the
lecture was "The Mental, Moral, Physical,
Political, Social, and Financial Improvement of
the Negro Race in America," a theme much
dwelt upon, with slight variations, by colored
orators. For to this struggling people, then as
now, the problem of their uncertain present and
their doubtful future was the chief concern of life.
The period was the hopeful one. The Federal
Government retained some vestige of authority in
the South, and the newly emancipated race
cherished the delusion that under the
Constitution, that enduring rock on which our
liberties are founded, and under the equal laws it
purported to guarantee, they would enter upon
the era of freedom and opportunity which their
Northern friends had inaugurated with such
solemn sanctions. The speaker pictured in
eloquent language the state of ideal equality and
happiness enjoyed by colored people
at the North: how they sent their children to
school with the white children; how they sat by
white people in the churches and theatres, ate
with them in the public restaurants, and buried
their dead in the same cemeteries. The professor
waxed eloquent with the development of his
theme, and, as a finishing touch to an alluring
picture, assured the excited audience that the
intermarriage of the races was common, and that
he himself had espoused a white woman. Uncle Wellington Braboy was a deeply
interested listener. He had heard something of
these facts before, but his information had
always come in such vague and questionable
shape that he had paid little attention to it. He
knew that the Yankees had freed the slaves, and
that runaway negroes had always gone to the
North to seek liberty; any such equality,
however, as the visiting brother had depicted,
was more than uncle Wellington had ever
conceived as actually existing anywhere in the
world. At first he felt inclined to doubt the truth
of the speaker's statements; but the cut of his
clothes, the eloquence of his language, and the
flowing length of his whiskers, were so far
superior to anything
uncle Wellington had ever met among the
colored people of his native State, that he felt
irresistibly impelled to the conviction that nothing
less than the advantages claimed for the North by
the visiting brother could have produced such an
exquisite flower of civilization. Any lingering
doubts uncle Wellington may have felt were
entirely dispelled by the courtly bow and cordial
grasp of the hand with which the visiting brother
acknowledged the congratulations showered
upon him by the audience at the close of his
address. The more uncle Wellington's mind dwelt upon
the professor's speech, the more attractive
seemed the picture of Northern life presented.
Uncle Wellington possessed in large measure the
imaginative faculty so freely bestowed by nature
upon the race from which the darker half of his
blood was drawn. He had indulged in occasional
day-dreams of an ideal state of social equality,
but his wildest flights of fancy had never located it
nearer than heaven, and he had felt some
misgivings about its practical working even there.
Its desirability he had never doubted, and the
speech of the evening before had given a local
habitation and a name to the forms his
imagination had bodied forth. Giving full rein to his
fancy, he saw in the North a land flowing with
milk and honey, - a land peopled by noble men
and beautiful women, among whom colored men
and women moved with the ease and grace of
acknowledged right. Then he placed himself in the
foreground of the picture. What a fine figure he
would have made in the world if he had been
born at the free North! He imagined himself
dressed like the professor, and passing the
contribution-box in a white church; and most
pleasant of his dreams, and the hardest to realize
as possible, was that of the gracious white lady he
might have called wife. Uncle Wellington was a
mulatto, and his features were those of his white
father, though tinged with the hue of his mother's
race; and as he lifted the kerosene lamp at
evening, and took a long look at his image in the
little mirror over the mantelpiece, he said to
himself that he was a very good-looking man, and
could have adorned a much higher sphere in life
than that in which the accident of birth had placed
him. He fell asleep and dreamed that he lived in a
two-story brick house, with a spacious flower
garden in front,
the whole inclosed by a high iron fence; that he
kept a carriage and servants, and never did a
stroke of work. This was the highest style of
living in Patesville, and he could conceive of
nothing finer. Uncle Wellington slept later than usual the
next morning, and the sunlight was pouring in at
the open window of the bedroom, when his
dreams were interrupted by the voice of his wife,
in tones meant to be harsh, but which no
ordinary degree of passion could rob of their
native unctuousness. "Git up f'm dere, you lazy, good-fuh-nuffin'
nigger! Is you gwine ter sleep all de mawnin'?
I 's ti'ed er dis yer runnin' 'roun' all night an' den
sleepin' all day. You won't git dat tater patch
hoed ovuh ter-day 'less'n you git up f'm dere an'
git at it." Uncle Wellington rolled over, yawned
cavernously, stretched himself, and with a
muttered protest got out of bed and put on his
clothes. Aunt Milly had prepared a smoking
breakfast of hominy and fried bacon, the odor of
which was very grateful to his nostrils. "Is breakfus' done ready?" he inquired,
tentatively, as he came into the kitchen and
glanced at the table.
"No, it ain't ready, an' 't ain't gwine ter be
ready 'tel you tote dat wood an' water in,"
replied aunt Milly severely, as she poured two
teacups of boiling water on two tablespoonfuls of
ground coffee. Uncle Wellington went down to the spring and
got a pail of water, after which he brought in
some oak logs for the fireplace and some
lightwood for kindling. Then he drew a chair
towards the table and started to sit down. "Wonduh what's de matter wid you dis
mawnin' anyhow," remarked aunt Milly. "You
must 'a' be'n up ter some devilment las' night, fer
yo' recommemb'ance is so po' dat you fus' fergit
ter git up, an' den fergit ter wash yo' face an'
hands fo' you set down ter de table. I don' 'low
nobody ter eat at my table dat a-way." "I don' see no use 'n washin' 'em so much,"
replied Wellington wearily. "Dey gits dirty ag'in
right off, an' den you got ter wash 'em ovuh ag'in;
it 's jes' pilin' up wuk what don' fetch in nuffin'. De
dirt don' show nohow, 'n' I don' see no
advantage in bein' black, ef you got to keep on
washin' yo' face 'n' han's jes' lack w'ite folks." He
nevertheless performed his ablutions in a
perfunctory way, and resumed his seat at the
breakfast-table. "Ole 'oman," he asked, after the edge of his
appetite had been taken off, "how would you
lack ter live at de Norf?" "I dunno nuffin' 'bout de Norf," replied aunt
Milly. "It 's hard 'nuff ter git erlong heah, whar
we knows all erbout it." "De brother what 'dressed de meetin' las'
night say dat de wages at de Norf is twicet ez
big ez dey is heah." "You could make a sight mo' wages heah ef
you'd 'ten' ter yo' wuk better," replied aunt Milly. Uncle Wellington ignored this personality, and
continued, "An' he say de cullud folks got all de
privileges er de w'ite folks, - dat dey chillen
goes ter school tergedder, dat dey sets on same
seats in chu'ch, an' sarves on jury, 'n' rides on de
kyars an' steamboats wid de w'ite folks, an' eats
at de fus' table." "Dat 'u'd suit you," chuckled aunt Milly, "an'
you 'd stay dere fer de secon' table, too. How
dis man know 'bout all dis yer foolis'ness?" she
asked incredulously.
"He come f'm de Norf," said uncle
Wellington, "an' he 'speunced it all hisse'f." "Well, he can't make me b'lieve it," she
rejoined, with a shake of her head. "An' you would n' lack ter go up dere an' 'joy
all dese privileges?" asked uncle Wellington, with
some degree of earnestness. The old woman laughed until her sides shook.
"Who gwine ter take me up dere?" she
inquired. "You got de money yo'se'f." "I ain' got no money fer ter was'e," she replied
shortly, becoming serious at once; and with that
the subject was dropped. Uncle Wellington pulled a hoe from under the
house, and took his way wearily to the potato
patch. He did not feel like working, but aunt
Milly was the undisputed head of the
establishment, and he did not dare to openly
neglect his work. In fact, he regarded work at
any time as a disagreeable necessity to be
avoided as much as possible. His wife was cast in a different mould.
Externally she would have impressed the casual
observer as a neat, well-preserved, and
good-looking black woman, of middle age,
every curve of whose ample figure - and her
figure was all curves - was suggestive of repose.
So far from being indolent, or even deliberate in
her movements, she was the most active and
energetic woman in the town. She went through
the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with
astonishing vigor. It was exhilarating to see her
wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up.
A quick jerk shook out the dampened garment;
one pass of her ample palm spread it over the
ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes
with the iron accomplished what would have
occupied the ordinary laundress for half an hour. To this uncommon, and in uncle Wellington's
opinion unnecessary and unnatural activity, his
own habits were a steady protest. If aunt Milly
had been willing to support him in idleness, he
would have acquiesced without a murmur in her
habits of industry. This she would not do, and,
moreover, insisted on his working at least half the
time. If she had invested the proceeds of her
labor in rich food and fine clothing, he might have
endured it better; but to her passion for
work was added a most detestable thrift. She
absolutely refused to pay for Wellington's clothes,
and required him to furnish a certain proportion of
the family supplies. Her savings were carefully put
by, and with them she had bought and paid for
the modest cottage which she and her husband
occupied. Under her careful hand it was always
neat and clean; in summer the little yard was gay
with bright-colored flowers, and woe to the
heedless pickaninny who should stray into her
yard and pluck a rose or a verbena! In a stout
oaken chest under her bed she kept a capacious
stocking, into which flowed a steady stream of
fractional currency. She carried the key to this
chest in her pocket, a proceeding regarded by
uncle Wellington with no little disfavor. He was of
the opinion - an opinion he would not have
dared to assert in her presence - that his wife's
earnings were his own property; and he looked
upon this stocking as a drunkard's wife might
regard the saloon which absorbed her husband's
wages. Uncle Wellington hurried over the potato
patch on the morning of the conversation above
recorded, and as soon as he saw aunt
Milly go away with a basket of clothes on her
head, returned to the house, put on his coat, and
went uptown. He directed his steps to a small frame building
fronting on the main street of the village, at a
point where the street was intersected by one of
the several creeks meandering through the town,
cooling the air, providing numerous swimming-holes
for the amphibious small boy, and furnishing
waterpower for grist-mills and saw-mills. The
rear of the building rested on long brick pillars,
built up from the bottom of the steep bank of the
creek, while the front was level with the street.
This was the office of Mr. Matthew Wright, the
sole representative of the colored race at the bar
of Chinquapin County. Mr. Wright came of an
"old issue" free colored family, in which, though
the negro blood was present in an attenuated
strain, a line of free ancestry could be traced
beyond the Revolutionary War. He had enjoyed
exceptional opportunities, and enjoyed the
distinction of being the first, and for a long time
the only colored lawyer in North Carolina. His
services were frequently called into requisition by
impecunious people of his own
race; when they had money they went to white
lawyers, who, they shrewdly conjectured, would
have more influence with judge or jury than a
colored lawyer, however able. Uncle Wellington found Mr. Wright in his
office. Having inquired after the health of the
lawyer's family and all his relations in detail, uncle
Wellington asked for a professional opinion. "Mistah Wright, ef a man's wife got money,
whose money is dat befo' de law - his'n er
her'n?" The lawyer put on his professional air, and
replied: - "Under the common law, which in default of
special legislative enactment is the law of North
Carolina, the personal property of the wife
belongs to her husband." "But dat don' jes' tech de p'int, suh. I wuz
axin' 'bout money." "You see, uncle Wellington, your education
has not rendered you familiar with legal
phraseology. The term 'personal property' or
'estate' embraces, according to Blackstone, all
property other than land, and therefore includes
money. Any money a man's wife has is his,
constructively, and will be recognized
as his actually, as soon as he can secure
possession of it." "Dat is ter say, suh - my eddication don'
quite 'low me ter understan' dat - dat is ter
say" - "That is to say, it 's yours when you get it. It
is n't yours so that the law will help you get it; but
on the other hand, when you once lay your hands
on it, it is yours so that the law won't take it
away from you." Uncle Wellington nodded to express his full
comprehension of the law as expounded by Mr.
Wright, but scratched his head in a way that
expressed some disappointment. The law
seemed to wobble. Instead of enabling him to
stand up fearlessly and demand his own, it threw
him back upon his own efforts; and the prospect
of his being able to overpower or outwit aunt
Milly by any ordinary means was very poor. He did not leave the office, but hung around
awhile as though there were something further he
wished to speak about. Finally, after some
discursive remarks about the crops and politics,
he asked, in an offhand, disinterested manner, as
though the thought had just occurred to him: -
"Mistah Wright, w'ile's we're talkin' 'bout
law matters, what do it cos' ter git a defoce?" "That depends upon circumstances. It isn't
altogether a matter of expense. Have you and
aunt Milly been having trouble?" "Oh no, suh; I was jes' a-wond'rin'." "You see," continued the lawyer, who was
fond of talking, and had nothing else to do for
the moment, "a divorce is not an easy thing to
get in this State under any circumstances. It used
to be the law that divorce could be granted only
by special act of the legislature; and it is but
recently that the subject has been relegated to
the jurisdiction of the courts." Uncle Wellington understood a part of this,
but the answer had not been exactly to the point
in his mind. "S'pos'n', den, jes' fer de argyment, me an'
my ole 'omen sh'd fall out en wanter separate,
how could I git a defoce?" "That would depend on what you quarreled
about. It's pretty hard work to answer general
questions in a particular way. If you merely
wished to separate, it would n't be necessary to
get a divorce; but if you should want to marry
again, you would have to be
divorced, or else you would be guilty of bigamy,
and could be sent to the penitentiary. But, by the
way, uncle Wellington, when were you married?" "I got married 'fo' de wah, when I was livin'
down on Rockfish Creek." "When you were in slavery?" "Yas, suh." "Did you have your marriage registered after
the surrender?" "No, suh; never knowed nuffin' 'bout dat." After the war, in North Carolina and other
States, the freed people who had sustained to
each other the relation of husband and wife as it
existed among slaves, were required by law to
register their consent to continue in the marriage
relation. By this simple expedient their former
marriages of convenience received the sanction
of law, and their children the seal of legitimacy.
In many cases, however, where the parties lived
in districts remote from the larger towns, the
ceremony was neglected, or never heard of by
the freedmen. "Well," said the lawyer, "if that is the case,
and you and aunt Milly should disagree, it
wouldn't be necessary for you to get a divorce,
even if you should want to marry again. You
were never legally married." "So Milly ain't my lawful wife, den?" "She may be your wife in one sense of the
word, but not in such a sense as to render you
liable to punishment for bigamy if you should
marry another woman. But I hope you will never
want to do anything of the kind, for you have a
very good wife now." Uncle Wellington went away thoughtfully, but
with a feeling of unaccustomed lightness and
freedom. He had not felt so free since the
memorable day when he had first heard of the
Emancipation Proclamation. On leaving the
lawyer's office, he called at the workshop of one
of his friends, Peter Williams, a shoemaker by
trade, who had a brother living in Ohio. "Is you hearn f'm Sam lately?" uncle
Wellington inquired, after the conversation had
drifted through the usual generalities. "His mammy got er letter f'm 'im las' week; he 's
livin' in de town er Groveland now." "How 's he gittin' on?" "He says he gittin' on monst'us well. He 'low
ez how he make five dollars a day w'ite-washin',
an' have all he kin do."
The shoemaker related various details of his
brother's prosperity, and uncle Wellington
returned home in a very thoughtful mood,
revolving in his mind a plan of future action. This
plan had been vaguely assuming form ever since
the professor's lecture, and the events of the
morning had brought out the detail in bold relief. Two days after the conversation with the
shoemaker, aunt Milly went, in the afternoon, to
visit a sister of hers who lived several miles out in
the country. During her absence, which lasted
until nightfall, uncle Wellington went uptown and
purchased a cheap oilcloth valise from a shrewd
son of Israel, who had penetrated to this locality
with a stock of notions and cheap clothing. Uncle
Wellington had his purchase done up in brown
paper, and took the parcel under his arm.
Arrived at home he unwrapped the valise, and
thrust into its capacious jaws his best suit of
clothes, some underwear, and a few other small
articles for personal use and adornment. Then he
carried the valise out into the yard, and, first
looking cautiously around to see if there was any
one in sight, concealed it in a clump of bushes
in a corner of the yard.
It may be inferred from this proceeding that
uncle Wellington was preparing for a step of
some consequence. In fact, he had fully made up
his mind to go to the North; but he still lacked the
most important requisite for traveling with
comfort, namely, the money to pay his expenses.
The idea of tramping the distance which
separated him from the promised land of liberty
and equality had never occurred to him. When a
slave, he had several times been importuned by
fellow servants to join them in the attempt to
escape from bondage, but he had never wanted
his freedom badly enough to walk a thousand
miles for it; if he could have gone to Canada by
stage-coach, or by rail, or on horseback, with
stops for regular meals, he would probably have
undertaken the trip. The funds he now needed for
his journey were in aunt Milly's chest. He had
thought a great deal about his right to this money.
It was his wife's savings, and he had never dared
to dispute, openly, her right to exercise exclusive
control over what she earned; but the lawyer had
assured him of his right to the money, of which he
was already constructively in possession, and he
had therefore determined
to possess himself actually of the coveted
stocking. It was impracticable for him to get the
key of the chest. Aunt Milly kept it in her pocket
by day and under her pillow at night. She was a
light sleeper, and, if not awakened by the
abstraction of the key, would certainly have been
disturbed by the unlocking of the chest. But one
alternative remained, and that was to break open
the chest in her absence. There was a revival in progress at the colored
Methodist church. Aunt Milly was as energetic in
her religion as in other respects, and had not
missed a single one of the meetings. She returned
at nightfall from her visit to the country and
prepared a frugal supper. Uncle Wellington did
not eat as heartily as usual. Aunt Milly perceived
his want of appetite, and spoke of it. He explained
it by saying that he did not feel very well. "Is you gwine ter chu'ch ter-night?" inquired
his wife. "I reckon I'll stay home an' go ter bed," he
replied. "I ain't be'n feelin' well dis evenin', an'
I 'spec' I better git a good night's res'."
"Well, you kin stay of you mineter. Good
preachin' 'u'd make you feel better, but ef you
ain't gwine, don' fergit ter tote in some wood an'
lighterd 'fo' you go ter bed. De moon is shinin'
bright, an' you can't have no 'scuse 'bout not
bein' able ter see." Uncle Wellington followed her out to the gate,
and watched her receding form until it
disappeared in the distance. Then he reentered
the house with a quick step, and taking a hatchet
from a corner of the room, drew the chest from
under the bed. As he applied the hatchet to the
fastenings, a thought struck him, and by the
flickering light of the pine-knot blazing on the
hearth, a look of hesitation might have been seen
to take the place of the determined expression his
face had worn up to that time. He had argued
himself into the belief that his present action was
lawful and justifiable. Though this conviction had
not prevented him from trembling in every limb, as
though he were committing a mere vulgar theft, it
had still nerved him to the deed. Now even his
moral courage began to weaken. The lawyer had
told him that his wife's property was his own; in
taking it he was therefore only exercising his
lawful right.
But at the point of breaking open the chest, it
occurred to him that he was taking this money in
order to get away from aunt Milly, and that he
justified his desertion of her by the lawyer's
opinion that she was not his lawful wife. If she
was not his wife, then he had no right to take the
money; if she was his wife, he had no right to
desert her, and would certainly have no right to
marry another woman. His scheme was about to
go to shipwreck on this rock, when another idea
occurred to him. "De lawyer say dat in one sense er de word
de ole 'omen is my wife, an' in anudder sense er
de word she ain't my wife. Ef I goes ter de Norf
an' marry a w'ite 'omen, I ain't commit no
brigamy, 'caze in dat sense er de word she ain't
my wife; but ef I takes dis money, I ain't stealin'
it, 'caze in dat sense er de word she is my wife.
Dat 'splains all de trouble away." Having reached this ingenious conclusion,
uncle Wellington applied the hatchet vigorously,
soon loosened the fastenings of the chest, and
with trembling hands extracted from its depths a
capacious blue cotton stocking. He emptied the
stocking on the table.
His first impulse was to take the whole, but again
there arose in his mind a doubt - a very
obtrusive, unreasonable doubt, but a doubt,
nevertheless - of the absolute rectitude of his
conduct; and after a moment's hesitation he
hurriedly counted the money - it was in bills of
small denominations - and found it to be about
two hundred and fifty dollars. He then divided it
into two piles of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars each. He put one pile into his pocket,
returned the remainder to the stocking, and
replaced it where he had found it. He then closed
the chest and shoved it under the bed. After
having arranged the fire so that it could safely be
left burning, he took a last look around the room,
and went out into the moonlight, locking the door
behind him, and hanging the key on a nail in the
wall, where his wife would be likely to look for
it. He then secured his valise from behind the
bushes, and left the yard. As he passed by the
wood-pile, he said to himself: - "Well, I declar' ef I ain't done fergot ter tote
in dat lighterd; I reckon de ole 'omen, 'll ha' ter
fetch it in herse'f dis time." He hastened through the quiet streets,
avoiding the few people who were abroad at that
hour, and soon reached the railroad station, from
which a North-bound train left at nine o'clock.
He went around to the dark side of the train, and
climbed into a second-class car, where he shrank
into the darkest corner and turned his face away
from the dim light of the single dirty lamp. There
were no passengers in the car except one or two
sleepy negroes, who had got on at some other
station, and a white man who had gone into the
car to smoke, accompanied by a gigantic
bloodhound. Finally the train crept out of the station. From
the window uncle Wellington looked out upon
the familiar cabins and turpentine stills, the new
barrel factory, the brickyard where he had once
worked for some time; and as the train rattled
through the outskirts of the town, he saw
gleaming in the moonlight the white headstones of
the colored cemetery where his only daughter
had been buried several years before. Presently the conductor came around. Uncle
Wellington had not bought a ticket, and the
conductor collected a cash fare. He was not
acquainted with uncle Wellington,
but had just had a drink at the saloon near the
depot, and felt at peace with all mankind. "Where are you going, uncle?" he inquired
carelessly. Uncle Wellington's face assumed the ashen hue
which does duty for pallor in dusky
countenances, and his knees began to tremble.
Controlling his voice as well as he could, he
replied that he was going up to Jonesboro, the
terminus of the railroad, to work for a gentleman
at that place. He felt immensely relieved when the
conductor pocketed the fare, picked up his
lantern, and moved away. It was very
unphilosophical and very absurd that a man who
was only doing right should feel like a thief, shrink
from the sight of other people, and lie
instinctively. Fine distinctions were not in uncle
Wellington's line, but he was struck by the
unreasonableness of his feelings, and still more by
the discomfort they caused him. By and by,
however, the motion of the train made him
drowsy; his thoughts all ran together in confusion;
and he fell asleep with his head on his valise, and
one hand in his pocket, clasped tightly around the
roll of money.
The train from Pittsburg drew into the Union
Depot at Groveland, Ohio, one morning in the
spring of 187-, with bell ringing and engine
puffing; and from a smoking-car emerged the
form of uncle Wellington Braboy, a little dusty
and travel-stained, and with a sleepy look about
his eyes. He mingled in the crowd, and, valise in
hand, moved toward the main exit from the
depot. There were several tracks to be crossed,
and more than once a watchman snatched him
out of the way of a baggage-truck, or a train
backing into the depot. He at length reached the
door, beyond which, and as near as the
regulations would permit, stood a number of
hackmen, vociferously soliciting patronage. One
of them, a colored man, soon secured several
passengers. As he closed the door after the last
one he turned to uncle Wellington, who stood
near him on the sidewalk, looking about
irresolutely. "Is you goin' uptown?" asked the hackman,
as he prepared to mount the box. "Yas, suh." "I'll take you up fo' a quahtah, ef you
want ter git up here an' ride on de box wid me." Uncle Wellington accepted the offer and
mounted the box. The hackman whipped up his
horses, the carriage climbed the steep hill leading
up to the town, and the passengers inside were
soon deposited at their hotels. "Whereabouts do you want to go?" asked
the hackman of uncle Wellington, when the
carriage was emptied of its last passengers. "I want ter go ter Brer Sam Williams's," said
Wellington. "What 's his street an' number?" Uncle Wellington did not know the street and
number, and the hackman had to explain to him
the mystery of numbered houses, to which he
was a total stranger. "Where is he from?" asked the hackman,
"and what is his business?" "He is f'm Norf Ca'lina," replied uncle
Wellington, "an' makes his livin' w'ite-washin'." "I reckon I knows de man," said the hackman.
"I 'spec' he 's changed his name. De man I
knows is name' Johnson. He b'longs ter my
chu'ch. I'm gwine out dat way ter git a passenger
fer de ten o'clock train, an' I'll take you by
dere."
They followed one of the least handsome
streets of the city for more than a mile, turned into
a cross street, and drew up before a small frame
house, from the front of which a sign, painted in
white upon a black background, announced to
the reading public, in letters inclined to each other
at various angles, that whitewashing and
kalsomining were "dun" there. A knock at the
door brought out a slatternly looking colored
woman. She had evidently been disturbed at her
toilet, for she held a comb in one hand, and the
hair on one side of her head stood out loosely,
while on the other side it was braided close to her
head. She called her husband, who proved to be
the Patesville shoemaker's brother. The hackman
introduced the traveler, whose name he had
learned on the way out, collected his quarter, and
drove away. Mr. Johnson, the shoemaker's brother,
welcomed uncle Wellington to Groveland, and
listened with eager delight to the news of the old
town, from which he himself had run away many
years before, and followed the North Star to
Groveland. He had changed his name from
"Williams" to "Johnson," on account of the
Fugitive Slave Law, which,
at the time of his escape from bondage, had
rendered it advisable for runaway slaves to court
obscurity. After the war he had retained the
adopted name. Mrs. Johnson prepared breakfast
for her guest, who ate it with an appetite
sharpened by his journey. After breakfast he
went to bed, and slept until late in the afternoon. After supper Mr. Johnson took uncle
Wellington to visit some of the neighbors who
had come from North Carolina before the war.
They all expressed much pleasure at meeting
"Mr. Braboy," a title which at first sounded a little
odd to uncle Wellington. At home he had been
"Wellin'ton," "Brer Wellin'ton," or "uncle
Wellin'ton;" it was a novel experience to be
called "Mister," and he set it down, with secret
satisfaction, as one of the first fruits of Northern
liberty. "Would you lack ter look 'roun' de town a
little?" asked Mr. Johnson at breakfast next
morning. "I ain' got no job dis mawnin', an' I kin
show you some er de sights." Uncle Wellington acquiesced in this
arrangement, and they walked up to the corner
to the street-car line. In a few moments a car
passed. Mr. Johnson jumped on the
moving car, and uncle Wellington followed his
example, at the risk of life or limb, as it was his
first experience of street cars. There was only one vacant seat in the car and
that was between two white women in the
forward end. Mr. Johnson motioned to the seat,
but Wellington shrank from walking between
those two rows of white people, to say nothing of
sitting between the two women, so he remained
standing in the rear part of the car. A moment
later, as the car rounded a short curve, he was
pitched sidewise into the lap of a stout woman
magnificently attired in a ruffled blue calico gown.
The lady colored up, and uncle Wellington, as he
struggled to his feet amid the laughter of the
passengers, was absolutely helpless with
embarrassment, until the conductor came up
behind him and pushed him toward the vacant
place. "Sit down, will you," he said; and before uncle
Wellington could collect himself, he was seated
between the two white women. Everybody in the
car seemed to be looking at him. But he came to
the conclusion, after he had pulled himself
together and reflected a few moments, that he
would find this
method of locomotion pleasanter when he got
used to it, and then he could score one more
glorious privilege gained by his change of
residence. They got off at the public square, in the heart of
the city, where there were flowers and statues,
and fountains playing. Mr. Johnson pointed out
the court-house, the post-office, the jail, and
other public buildings fronting on the square. They
visited the market near by, and from an elevated
point, looked down upon the extensive lumber
yards and factories that were the chief sources of
the city's prosperity. Beyond these they could see
the fleet of ships that lined the coal and iron ore
docks of the harbor. Mr. Johnson, who was quite
a fluent talker, enlarged upon the wealth and
prosperity of the city; and Wellington, who had never
before been in a town of more than three thousand
inhabitants, manifested sufficient interest and wonder
to satisfy the most exacting
cicerone.
They called at the office of a colored lawyer and
member of the legislature, formerly from North
Carolina, who, scenting a new constituent and a
possible client, greeted the stranger warmly, and
in flowing speech pointed out
the superior advantages of life at the North, citing
himself as an illustration of the possibilities of life
in a country really free. As they wended their
way homeward to dinner uncle Wellington, with
quickened pulse and rising hopes, felt that this
was indeed the promised land, and that it must be
flowing with milk and honey. Uncle Wellington remained at the residence of
Mr. Johnson for several weeks before making
any effort to find employment. He spent this
period in looking about the city. The most
commonplace things possessed for him the
charm of novelty, and he had come prepared to
admire. Shortly after his arrival, he had offered to
pay for his board, intimating at the same time that
he had plenty of money. Mr. Johnson declined to
accept anything from him for board, and
expressed himself as being only too proud to
have Mr. Braboy remain in the house on the
footing of an honored guest, until he had settled
himself. He lightened in some degree, however,
the burden of obligation under which a prolonged
stay on these terms would have placed his guest,
by soliciting from the latter occasional small
loans, until uncle Wellington's roll of money
began to lose its plumpness, and with an empty
pocket staring him in the face, he felt the
necessity of finding something to do. During his residence in the city he had met
several times his first acquaintance, Mr. Peterson,
the hackman, who from time to time inquired how
he was getting along. On one of these occasions
Wellington mentioned his willingness to accept
employment. As good luck would have it, Mr.
Peterson knew of a vacant situation. He had
formerly been coachman for a wealthy gentleman
residing on Oakwood Avenue, but had resigned
the situation to go into business for himself. His
place had been filled by an Irishman, who had just
been discharged for drunkenness, and the
gentleman that very day had sent word to Mr.
Peterson, asking him if he could recommend a
competent and trustworthy coachman. "Does you know anything erbout hosses?"
asked Mr. Peterson. "Yes, indeed, I does," said Wellington. "I wuz
raise' 'mongs' hosses." "I tol' my ole boss I'd look out fer a man, an'
ef you reckon you kin fill de 'quirements er de
situation, I'll take yo' roun' dere ter-morrer
mornin'. You wants ter put on yo'
bes' clothes an' slick up, fer dey're partic'lar
people. Ef you git de place I'll expec' you ter pay
me fer de time I lose in 'tendin' ter yo' business,
fer time is money in dis country, an' folks don't
do much fer nuthin'." Next morning Wellington blacked his shoes
carefully, put on a clean collar, and with the aid
of Mrs. Johnson tied his cravat in a jaunty bow
which gave him quite a sprightly air and a much
younger look than his years warranted. Mr.
Peterson called for him at eight o'clock. After
traversing several cross streets they turned into
Oakwood Avenue and walked along the finest
part of it for about half a mile. The handsome
houses of this famous avenue, the stately trees,
the widespreading lawns, dotted with flower
beds, fountains and statuary, made up a picture
so far surpassing anything in Wellington's
experience as to fill him with an almost
oppressive sense of its beauty. "Hit looks lack hebben," he said softly. "It's a pootty fine street," rejoined his
companion, with a judicial air, "but I don't like
dem big lawns. It's too much trouble ter keep de
grass down. One er dem lawns is big enough to
pasture a couple er cows."
They went down a street running at right
angles to the avenue, and turned into the rear of
the corner lot. A large building of pressed brick,
trimmed with stone, loomed up before them. "Do de gemman lib in dis house?" asked
Wellington, gazing with awe at the front of the
building. "No, dat's de barn," said Mr. Peterson with
good-natured contempt; and leading the way
past a clump of shrubbery to the dwelling-house,
he went up the back steps and rang the
door-bell. The ring was answered by a buxom
Irishwoman, of a natural freshness of complexion
deepened to a fiery red by the heat of a kitchen
range. Wellington thought he had seen her
before, but his mind had received so many new
impressions lately that it was a minute or two
before he recognized in her the lady whose lap
he had involuntarily occupied for a moment on
his first day in Groveland. "Faith," she exclaimed as she admitted them,
"an' it 's mighty glad I am to see ye ag'in, Misther
Payterson! An' how hev ye be'n, Misther
Payterson, sence I see ye lahst?"
"Middlin' well, Mis' Flannigan, middlin' well,
'ceptin' a tech er de rheumatiz. S'pose you be'n
doin' well as usual?" "Oh yis, as well as a decent woman could do
wid a drunken baste about the place like the
lahst coachman. O Misther Payterson, it would
make yer heart bleed to see the way the
spalpeen cut up a-Saturday! But Misther Todd
discharged 'im the same avenin', widout a
characther, bad 'cess to 'im, an' we 've had no
coachman sence at all, at all. An' it's sorry
I am" - The lady's flow of eloquence was interrupted
at this point by the appearance of Mr. Todd
himself, who had been informed of the men's
arrival. He asked some questions in regard to
Wellington's qualifications and former
experience, and in view of his recent arrival in the
city was willing to accept Mr. Peterson's
recommendation instead of a reference. He said
a few words about the nature of the work, and
stated his willingness to pay Wellington the
wages formerly allowed Mr. Peterson, thirty
dollars a month and board and lodging. This handsome offer was eagerly accepted,
and it was agreed that Wellington's term of
service should begin immediately. Mr. Peterson,
being familiar with the work, and financially
interested, conducted the new coachman through
the stables and showed him what he would have
to do. The silver-mounted harness, the variety of
carriages, the names of which he learned for the
first time, the arrangements for feeding and
watering the horses, - these appointments of a
rich man's stable impressed Wellington very
much, and he wondered that so much luxury
should be wasted on mere horses. The room
assigned to him, in the second story of the barn,
was a finer apartment than he had ever slept in;
and the salary attached to the situation was
greater than the combined monthly earnings of
himself and aunt Milly in their Southern home.
Surely, he thought, his lines had fallen in pleasant
places. Under the stimulus of new surroundings
Wellington applied himself diligently to work,
and, with the occasional advice of Mr. Peterson,
soon mastered the details of his employment. He
found the female servants, with whom he took
his meals, very amiable ladies. The cook, Mrs.
Katie Flannigan, was a widow. Her husband, a
sailor, had been lost at sea.
She was a woman of many words, and when she
was not lamenting the late Flannigan's
loss, - according to her story he had been a
model of all the virtues, - she would turn the
batteries of her tongue against the former
coachman. This gentleman, as Wellington
gathered from frequent remarks dropped by Mrs.
Flannigan, had paid her attentions clearly
susceptible of a serious construction. These
attentions had not borne their legitimate fruit, and
she was still a widow unconsoled, - hence Mrs.
Flannigan's tears. The housemaid was a plump,
good-natured German girl, with a pronounced
German accent. The presence on washdays of a
Bohemian laundress, of recent importation,
added another to the variety of ways in which the
English tongue was mutilated in Mr. Todd's
kitchen. Association with the white women drew
out all the native gallantry of the mulatto, and
Wellington developed quite a helpful turn. His
politeness, his willingness to lend a hand in
kitchen or laundry, and the fact that he was the
only male servant on the place, combined to
make him a prime favorite in the servants'
quarters. It was the general opinion among Wellington's
acquaintances that he was a single man.
He had come to the city alone, had never been
heard to speak of a wife, and to personal
questions bearing upon the subject of matrimony
had always returned evasive answers. Though he
had never questioned the correctness of the
lawyer's opinion in regard to his slave marriage,
his conscience had never been entirely at ease
since his departure from the South, and any
positive denial of his married condition would
have stuck in his throat. The inference naturally
drawn from his reticence in regard to the past,
coupled with his expressed intention of settling
permanently in Groveland, was that he belonged
in the ranks of the unmarried, and was therefore
legitimate game for any widow or old maid who
could bring him down. As such game is bagged
easiest at short range, he received numerous
invitations to tea-parties, where he feasted on
unlimited chicken and pound cake. He used to
compare these viands with the plain fare often
served by aunt Milly, and the result of the
comparison was another item to the credit of the
North upon his mental ledger. Several of the
colored ladies who smiled upon him were blessed
with good looks, and uncle Wellington, naturally
of a susceptible
temperament, as people of lively imagination
are apt to be, would probably have fallen a victim
to the charms of some woman of his own race,
had it not been for a strong counter-attraction in
the person of Mrs. Flannigan. The attentions of
the lately discharged coachman had lighted anew
the smouldering fires of her widowed heart, and
awakened longings which still remained
unsatisfied. She was thirty-five years old, and felt
the need of some one else to love. She was not a
woman of lofty ideals; with her a man was a
man - and, aside from the accident of color, uncle
Wellington was as personable a man as any of
her acquaintance. Some people might have
objected to his complexion; but then, Mrs.
Flannigan argued, he was at least half white; and,
this being the case, there was no good reason
why he should be regarded as black. Uncle Wellington was not slow to perceive
Mrs. Flannigan's charms of person, and
appreciated to the full the skill that prepared the
choice tidbits reserved for his plate at dinner.
The prospect of securing a white
wife had been one of the principal inducements
offered by a life at the North; but the awe of
white people in which he had been reared was
still too strong to permit his taking any active
steps toward the object of his secret desire, had
not the lady herself come to his assistance with a
little of the native coquetry of her race. "Ah, Misther Braboy," she said one evening
when they sat at the supper table alone, - it was
the second girl's afternoon off, and she had not
come home to supper, - "it must be an awful
lonesome life ye've been afther l'adin', as a single
man, wid no one to cook fer ye, or look afther
ye." "It are a kind er lonesome life, Mis' Flannigan,
an' dat's a fac'. But sence I had de privilege er
eatin' yo' cookin' an' 'joyin' yo' society, I ain' felt
a bit lonesome." "Yer flatthrin' me, Misther Braboy. An' even
if ye mane it" - "I means eve'y word of it, Mis' Flannigan." "An' even if ye mane it, Misther Braboy, the
time is liable to come when things 'll be
different; for service is uncertain, Misther
Braboy. An' then you'll wish you had some nice,
clean woman, 'at knowed how to cook an' wash
an' iron, ter look afther ye, an' make yer life
comfortable." Uncle Wellington sighed, and looked at her
languishingly. "It 'u'd all be well ernuff, Mis' Flannigan, ef I
had n' met you; but I don' know whar I's ter fin'
a colored lady w'at 'll begin ter suit me after
habbin' libbed in de same house wid you." "Colored lady, indade! Why, Misther
Braboy, ye don't nade ter demane yerself by
marryin' a colored lady - not but they're as good
as anybody else, so long as they behave
themselves. There 's many a white woman 'u'd be
glad ter git as fine a lookin' man as ye are." "Now you 're flattrin' me, Mis' Flannigan," said Wellington. But he felt a
sudden and substantial increase in courage when
she had spoken, and it was with astonishing ease
that he found himself saying: - "Dey ain' but one lady, Mis' Flannigan, dat
could injuce me ter want ter change de
lonesomeness er my singleness fer de
'sponsibilities er matermony, an' I 'm feared
she'd say no ef I'd ax her."
"Ye'd better ax her, Misther Braboy, an' not
be wastin' time a-wond'rin'. Do I know the
lady?" "You knows 'er better 'n anybody else, Mis'
Flannigan. You is de only lady I'd be satisfied ter
marry after knowin' you. Ef you casts me off I'll
spen' de rest er my days in lonesomeness an'
mis'ry." Mrs. Flannigan affected much surprise and
embarrassment at this bold declaration. "Oh, Misther Braboy," she said, covering him
with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to
hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though
I'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that
I'd b'en able ter draw yer affections to mesilf." "I's loved you ever sence I fell in yo' lap on
de street car de fus' day I wuz in Groveland,"
he said, as he moved his chair up closer to hers. One evening in the following week they went
out after supper to the residence of Rev. Cæsar
Williams, pastor of the colored Baptist church,
and, after the usual preliminaries, were
pronounced man and wife.
According to all his preconceived notions, this
marriage ought to have been the acme of uncle
Wellington's felicity. But he soon found that it
was not without its drawbacks. On the following
morning Mr. Todd was informed of the marriage.
He had no special objection to it, or interest in it,
except that he was opposed on principle to
having husband and wife in his employment at the
same time. As a consequence, Mrs. Braboy,
whose place could be more easily filled than that
of her husband, received notice that her services
would not be required after the end of the month.
Her husband was retained in his place as
coachman. Upon the loss of her situation Mrs. Braboy
decided to exercise the married woman's
prerogative of letting her husband support her.
She rented the upper floor of a small house in an
Irish neighborhood. The newly wedded pair
furnished their rooms on the installment plan and
began housekeeping. There was one little circumstance, however,
that interfered slightly with their enjoyment of
that perfect freedom from care which ought
to characterize a honeymoon. The people who
owned the house and occupied the lower floor
had rented the upper part to Mrs. Braboy in
person, it never occurring to them that her
husband could be other than a white man. When
it became known that he was colored, the
landlord, Mr. Dennis O'Flaherty, felt that he had
been imposed upon, and, at the end of the first
month, served notice upon his tenants to leave
the premises. When Mrs. Braboy, with
characteristic impetuosity, inquired the meaning
of this proceeding, she was informed by Mr.
O'Flaherty that he did not care to live in the same
house "wid naygurs." Mrs. Braboy resented the
epithet with more warmth than dignity, and for a
brief space of time the air was green with choice
specimens of brogue, the altercation barely
ceasing before it had reached the point of blows. It was quite clear that the Braboys could not
longer live comfortably in Mr. O'Flaherty's
house, and they soon vacated the premises, first
letting the rent get a couple of weeks in arrears
as a punishment to the too fastidious landlord.
They moved to a small house on Hackman
Street, a favorite locality with colored people.
For a while, affairs ran smoothly in the new
home. The colored people seemed, at first, well
enough disposed toward Mrs. Braboy, and she
made quite a large acquaintance among them. It
was difficult, however, for Mrs. Braboy to divest
herself of the consciousness that she was white,
and therefore superior to her neighbors.
Occasional words and acts by which she
manifested this feeling were noticed and resented
by her keen-eyed and sensitive colored
neighbors. The result was a slight coolness
between them. That her few white neighbors did
not visit her, she naturally and no doubt correctly
imputed to disapproval of her matrimonial
relations. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Braboy was
left a good deal to her own company. Owing to
lack of opportunity in early life, she was not a
woman of many resources, either mental or
moral. It is therefore not strange that, in order to
relieve her loneliness, she should occasionally
have recourse to a glass of beer, and, as the
habit grew upon her, to still stronger stimulants.
Uncle Wellington himself was no teetotaler, and
did not interpose any objection so long as she
kept her potations within reasonable limits, and
was apparently none the worse for them; indeed,
he sometimes joined her in a glass. On one of
these occasions he drank a little too much, and,
while driving the ladies of Mr. Todd's family to
the opera, ran against a lamp-post and
overturned the carriage, to the serious
discomposure of the ladies' nerves and at the
cost of his situation. A coachman discharged under such
circumstances is not in the best position for
procuring employment at his calling, and uncle
Wellington, under the pressure of need, was
obliged to seek some other means of livelihood.
At the suggestion of his friend Mr. Johnson, he
bought a whitewash brush, a peck of lime, a
couple of pails, and a handcart, and began work
as a whitewasher. His first efforts were very
crude, and for a while he lost a customer in every
person he worked for. He nevertheless managed
to pick up a living during the spring and summer
months, and to support his wife and himself in
comparative comfort. The approach of winter put an end to the
whitewashing season, and left uncle Wellington
dependent for support upon occasional jobs of
unskilled labor. The income derived from
these was very uncertain, and Mrs. Braboy was
at length driven, by stress of circumstances, to
the washtub, that last refuge of honest,
able-bodied poverty, in all countries where the
use of clothing is conventional. The last state of uncle Wellington was now
worse than the first. Under the soft firmness of
aunt Milly's rule, he had not been required to do
a great deal of work, prompt and cheerful
obedience being chiefly what was expected of
him. But matters were very different here. He
had not only to bring in the coal and water, but
to rub the clothes and turn the wringer, and to
humiliate himself before the public by emptying
the tubs and hanging out the wash in full view of
the neighbors; and he had to deliver the clothes
when laundered. At times Wellington found himself wondering if
his second marriage had been a wise one. Other
circumstances combined to change in some
degree his once rose-colored conception of life
at the North. He had believed that all men were
equal in this favored locality, but he discovered
more degrees of inequality than he had ever
perceived at the South. A colored man might be
as good as a white
man in theory, but neither of them was of any
special consequence without money, or talent, or
position. Uncle Wellington found a great many
privileges open to him at the North, but he had
not been educated to the point where he could
appreciate them or take advantage of them; and
the enjoyment of many of them was expensive,
and, for that reason alone, as far beyond his
reach as they had ever been. When he once
began to admit even the possibility of a mistake
on his part, these considerations presented
themselves to his mind with increasing force. On
occasions when Mrs. Braboy would require of
him some unusual physical exertion, or when too
frequent applications to the bottle had loosened
her tongue, uncle Wellington's mind would revert,
with a remorseful twinge of conscience, to the
dolce far niente of his Southern home; a film
would come over his eyes and brain, and, instead
of the red-faced Irishwoman opposite him, he
could see the black but comely disk of aunt
Milly's countenance bending over the washtub;
the elegant brogue of Mrs. Braboy would
deliquesce into the soft dialect of North
Carolina; and he would only be aroused from
this blissful reverie by a wet
shirt or a handful of suds thrown into his face,
with which gentle reminder his wife would recall
his attention to the duties of the moment. There came a time, one day in spring, when
there was no longer any question about it: uncle
Wellington was desperately homesick. Liberty, equality, privileges, - all were but as
dust in the balance when weighed against his
longing for old scenes and faces. It was the
natural reaction in the mind of a middle-aged man
who had tried to force the current of a sluggish
existence into a new and radically different
channel. An active, industrious man, making the
change in early life, while there was time to spare
for the waste of adaptation, might have found in
the new place more favorable conditions than in
the old. In Wellington age and temperament
combined to prevent the success of the
experiment; the spirit of enterprise and ambition
into which he had been temporarily galvanized
could no longer prevail against the inertia of old
habits of life and thought. One day when he had been sent to deliver
clothes he performed his errand quickly, and
boarding a passing street car, paid one of his
very few five-cent pieces to ride down to the
office of the Hon. Mr. Brown, the colored
lawyer whom he had visited when he first came
to the city, and who was well known to him by
sight and reputation. "Mr. Brown," he said, "I ain' gitt'n' 'long very
well wid my ole 'oman." "What 's the trouble?" asked the lawyer,
with business-like curtness, for he did not scent
much of a fee. "Well, de main trouble is she doan treat me
right. An' den she gits drunk, an' wuss'n dat, she
lays vi'lent han's on me. I kyars de marks er dat
'oman on my face now." He showed the lawyer a long scratch on the
neck. "Why don't you defend yourself?" "You don' know Mis' Braboy, suh; you don'
know dat 'oman," he replied, with a shake of the
head. "Some er dese yer w'ite women is
monst'us strong in de wris'." "Well, Mr. Braboy, it's what you might have
expected when you turned your back on your
own people and married a white woman. You
weren't content with being a slave to the white
folks once, but you must
try it again. Some people never know when
they've got enough. I don't see that there's
any help for you; unless," he added suggestively,
"you had a good deal of money." " 'Pears ter me I heared somebody say sence I
be'n up heah, dat it wuz 'gin de law fer w'ite
folks an' colored folks ter marry." "That was once the law, though it has always
been a dead letter in Groveland. In fact, it was
the law when you got married, and until I
introduced a bill in the legislature last fall to repeal
it. But even that law didn't hit cases like yours. It
was unlawful to make such a marriage, but it was
a good marriage when once made." "I don' jes' git dat th'oo my head," said
Wellington, scratching that member as though to
make a hole for the idea to enter. "It's quite plain, Mr. Braboy. It's unlawful to
kill a man, but when he's killed he's just as dead
as though the law permitted it. I'm afraid you
have n't much of a case, but if you'll go to work
and get twenty-five dollars together, I'll see
what I can do for you. We may be able to pull a
case through on the ground of extreme cruelty. I
might even start the case if you brought in ten
dollars."
Wellington went away sorrowfully. The laws
of Ohio were very little more satisfactory than
those of North Carolina. And as for the ten
dollars, - the lawyer might as well have told him
to bring in the moon, or a deed for the Public
Square. He felt very, very low as he hurried back
home to supper, which he would have to go
without if he were not on hand at the usual
supper-time. But just when his spirits were lowest, and his
outlook for the future most hopeless, a measure
of relief was at hand. He noticed, when he
reached home, that Mrs. Braboy was a little
preoccupied, and did not abuse him as vigorously
as he expected after so long an absence. He also
perceived the smell of strange tobacco in the
house, of a better grade than he could afford to
use. He thought perhaps some one had come in
to see about the washing; but he was too glad of
a respite from Mrs. Braboy's rhetoric to imperil it
by indiscreet questions. Next morning she gave him fifty cents. "Braboy," she said, "ye've be'n helpin' me
nicely wid the washin', an' I 'm going ter give ye a
holiday. Ye can take yer hook an' line an' go
fishin' on the breakwater. I'll fix
ye a lunch, an' ye need n't come back till night.
An' there's half a dollar; ye can buy yerself a
pipe er terbacky. But be careful an' don't waste
it," she added, for fear she was overdoing the
thing. Uncle Wellington was overjoyed at this
change of front on the part of Mrs. Braboy; if she
would make it permanent he did not see why
they might not live together very comfortably. The day passed pleasantly down on the
breakwater. The weather was agreeable, and the
fish bit freely. Towards evening Wellington
started home with a bunch of fish that no angler
need have been ashamed of. He looked forward
to a good warm supper; for even if something
should have happened during the day to alter his
wife's mood for the worse, any ordinary variation
would be more than balanced by the substantial
addition of food to their larder. His mouth
watered at the thought of the finny beauties
sputtering in the frying-pan. He noted, as he approached the house, that
there was no smoke coming from the chimney.
This only disturbed him in connection with the
matter of supper. When he entered the
gate he observed further that the windowshades
had been taken down. "'Spec' de ole 'oman's been house-cleanin',"
he said to himself. "I wonder she did n' make me
stay an' he'p 'er." He went round to the rear of the house and
tried the kitchen door. It was locked. This was
somewhat of a surprise, and disturbed still further
his expectations in regard to supper. When he
had found the key and opened the door, the
gravity of his next discovery drove away for the
time being all thoughts of eating. The kitchen was empty. Stove, table, chairs,
wash-tubs, pots and pans, had vanished as if into
thin air. "Fo' de Lawd's sake!" he murmured in
open-mouthed astonishment. He passed into the other room, - they had
only two, - which had served as bedroom and
sitting-room. It was as bare as the first, except
that in the middle of the floor were piled uncle
Wellington's clothes. It was not a large pile, and
on the top of it lay a folded piece of yellow
wrapping-paper. Wellington stood for a moment as if petrified.
Then he rubbed his eyes and looked around him.
"W'at do dis mean?" he said. "Is I
er-dreamin', er does I see w'at I 'pears ter see?"
He glanced down at the bunch of fish which he
still held. "Heah's de fish; heah's de house; heah
I is; but whar 's de ole 'omen, an' whar 's de
fu'niture? I can't figure out w'at dis yer all means." He picked up the piece of paper and unfolded
it. It was written on one side. Here was the
obvious solution of the mystery, - that is, it
would have been obvious if he could have read it;
but he could not, and so his fancy continued to
play upon the subject. Perhaps the house had
been robbed, or the furniture taken back by the
seller, for it had not been entirely paid for. Finally he went across the street and called to
a boy in a neighbor's yard. "Does you read writin', Johnnie?" "Yes, sir, I'm in the seventh grade." "Read dis yer paper fuh me." The youngster took the note, and with much
labor read the following: - "MR. BRABOY: "In lavin' ye so suddint I have ter say that my
first husban' has turned up unixpected,
PERHAPS THE HOUSE HAD BEEN ROBBED
having been saved onbeknownst ter me
from a wathry grave an' all the money wasted I
spint fer masses fer ter rist his sole an' I wish I
had it back I feel it my dooty ter go an' live wid
'im again. I take the furnacher because I bought it
yer close is yors I leave them and wishin' yer the
best of luck I remane oncet yer wife but now
agin "MRS. KATIE FLANNIGAN. On inquiry uncle Wellington learned from the
boy that shortly after his departure in the morning
a white man had appeared on the scene,
followed a little later by a moving-van, into which
the furniture had been loaded and carried away.
Mrs. Braboy, clad in her best clothes, had
locked the door, and gone away with the
strange white man. The news was soon noised about the street.
Wellington swapped his fish for supper and a
bed at a neighbor's, and during the evening
learned from several sources that the strange
white man had been at his house the afternoon of
the day before. His neighbors intimated that they
thought Mrs. Braboy's
departure a good riddance of bad rubbish, and
Wellington did not dispute the proposition. Thus ended the second chapter of
Wellington's matrimonial experiences. His wife's
departure had been the one thing needful to
convince him, beyond a doubt, that he had been
a great fool. Remorse and homesickness forced
him to the further conclusion that he had been
knave as well as fool, and had treated aunt Milly
shamefully. He was not altogether a bad old man,
though very weak and erring, and his better
nature now gained the ascendancy. Of course his
disappointment had a great deal to do with his
remorse; most people do not perceive the
hideousness of sin until they begin to reap its
consequences. Instead of the beautiful Northern
life he had dreamed of, he found himself
stranded, penniless, in a strange land, among
people whose sympathy he had forfeited, with no
one to lean upon, and no refuge from the storms
of life. His outlook was very dark, and there
sprang up within him a wild longing to get back
to North Carolina, - back to the little
whitewashed cabin, shaded with china and
mulberry trees; back to the wood-pile
and the garden; back to the old cronies with
whom he had swapped lies and tobacco for so
many years. He longed to kiss the rod of aunt
Milly's domination. He had purchased his liberty
at too great a price. The next day he disappeared from Groveland.
He had announced his departure only to Mr.
Johnson, who sent his love to his relations in
Patesville. It would be painful to record in detail the
return journey of uncle Wellington - Mr. Braboy
no longer - to his native town; how many weary
miles he walked; how many times he risked his
life on railroad trucks and between freight cars;
how he depended for sustenance on the grudging
hand of backdoor charity. Nor would it be
profitable or delicate to mention any slight
deviations from the path of rectitude, as judged
by conventional standards, to which he may
occasionally have been driven by a too insistent
hunger; or to refer in the remotest degree to a
compulsory sojourn of thirty days in a city where
he had no references, and could show no visible
means of support. True charity will let these
purely personal matters remain locked in the
bosom of him who suffered them.
Just fifteen months after the date when uncle
Wellington had left North Carolina, a
weather-beaten figure entered the town of Patesville
after nightfall, following the railroad track from the
north. Few would have recognized in the hungry-looking
old brown tramp, clad in dusty rags and
limping along with bare feet, the trim-looking
middle-aged mulatto who so few months before
had taken the train from Patesville for the distant
North; so, if he had but known it, there was no
necessity for him to avoid the main streets and
sneak around by unfrequented paths to reach the
old place on the other side of the town. He
encountered nobody that he knew, and soon the
familiar shape of the little cabin rose before him.
It stood distinctly outlined against the sky, and
the light streaming from the half-opened shutters
showed it to be occupied. As he drew nearer,
every familiar detail of the place appealed to his
memory and to his affections, and his heart went
out to the old home and the old wife. As he came
nearer still, the odor of fried chicken floated out
upon the air and set his mouth to watering,
and awakened unspeakable longings in his
half-starved stomach. At this moment, however, a fearful thought
struck him; suppose the old woman had taken
legal advice and married again during his
absence? Turn about would have been only fair
play. He opened the gate softly, and with his
heart in his mouth approached the window on
tiptoe and looked in. A cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, in
front of which sat the familiar form of aunt
Milly - and another, at the sight of whom uncle
Wellington's heart sank within him. He knew the
other person very well; he had sat there more
than once before uncle Wellington went away. It
was the minister of the church to which his wife
belonged. The preacher's former visits, however,
had signified nothing more than pastoral courtesy,
or appreciation of good eating. His presence now
was of serious portent; for Wellington recalled,
with acute alarm, that the elder's wife had died
only a few weeks before his own departure for
the North. What was the occasion of his
presence this evening? Was it merely a pastoral
call? or was he courting? or had aunt Milly taken
legal advice and married the elder?
Wellington remembered a crack in the wall, at
the back of the house, through which he could
see and hear, and quietly stationed himself there. "Dat chicken smells mighty good, Sis' Milly,"
the elder was saying; "I can't fer de life er me see
why dat low-down husban' er yo'n could ever
run away f'm a cook like you. It's one er de
beatenis' things I ever heared. How he could lib
wid you an' not 'preciate you I can't understan',
no indeed I can't." Aunt Milly sighed. "De trouble wid Wellin'ton
wuz," she replied, "dat he did n' know when he
wuz well off. He wuz alluz wishin' fer change, er
studyin' 'bout somethin' new." "Ez fer me," responded the elder earnestly, "I
likes things what has be'n prove' an' tried an' has
stood de tes', an' I can't 'magine how anybody
could spec' ter fin' a better housekeeper er cook
dan you is, Sis' Milly. I'm a gittin' mighty lonesone
sence my wife died. De Good Book say it is not
good fer man ter lib alone, en it 'pears ter me dat
you an' me mought git erlong tergether monst'us
well." Wellington's heart stood still, while he
listened with strained attention. Aunt Milly
sighed. "I ain't denyin', elder, but what I've be'n
kinder lonesome myself for quite a w'ile, an' I
doan doubt dat w'at de Good Book say 'plies ter
women as well as ter men." "You kin be sho' it do," averred the elder,
with professional authoritativeness; "yas 'm, you
kin be cert'n sho'." "But, of co'se," aunt Milly went on, "havin' los'
my ole man de way I did, it has tuk me some
time fer ter git my feelin's straighten' out like dey
oughter be." "I kin 'magine yo' feelin's Sis' Milly," chimed in
the elder sympathetically, "w'en you come home
dat night an' foun' yo' chist broke open, an' yo'
money gone dat you had wukked an' slaved fuh
f'm mawnin' 'tel night, year in an' year out, an'
w'en you foun' dat no-'count nigger gone wid his
clo's an' you lef' all alone in de worl' ter scuffle
'long by yo'self." "Yas, elder," responded aunt Milly, "I wa'n't
used right. An' den w'en I heared 'bout his goin'
ter de lawyer ter fin' out 'bout a defoce, an' w'en
I heared w'at de lawyer said 'bout my not bein'
his wife 'less he
wanted me, it made me so mad, I made up my
min' dat ef he ever put his foot on my do'sill ag'in,
I'd shet de do' in his face an' tell 'im ter go back
whar he come f'm." To Wellington, on the outside, the cabin had
never seemed so comfortable, aunt Milly never so
desirable, chicken never so appetizing, as at this
moment when they seemed slipping away from
his grasp forever. "Yo' feelin's does you credit, Sis' Milly," said
the elder, taking her hand, which for a moment
she did not withdraw. "An' de way fer you ter
close yo' do' tightes' ag'inst 'im is ter take me in
his place. He ain' got no claim on you no mo'. He
tuk his ch'ice 'cordin' ter w'at de lawyer tol' 'im,
an' 'termine' dat he wa'n't yo' husban'. Ef he
wa'n't yo' husban', he had no right ter take yo'
money, an' ef he comes back here ag'in you kin
hab 'im tuck up an' sent ter de penitenchy fer
stealin' it." Uncle Wellington's knees, already weak from
fasting, trembled violently beneath him. The
worst that he had feared was now likely to
happen. His only hope of safety lay in flight, and
yet the scene within so fascinated him that he
could not move a step.
"It 'u'd serve him right," exclaimed aunt Milly
indignantly, "ef he wuz sent ter de penitenchy fer
life! Dey ain't nuthin' too mean ter be done ter
'im. What did I ever do dat he should use me like
he did?" The recital of her wrongs had wrought upon
aunt Milly's feelings so that her voice broke, and
she wiped her eyes with her apron. The elder looked serenely confident, and
moved his chair nearer hers in order the better to
play the rôle of comforter. Wellington, on the
outside, felt so mean that the darkness of the
night was scarcely sufficient to hide him; it would
be no more than right if the earth were to open
and swallow him up. "An' yet aftuh all, elder," said Milly with a sob,
"though I knows you is a better man, an' would
treat me right, I wuz so use' ter dat ole nigger, an'
libbed wid 'im so long, dat ef he'd open dat do'
dis minute an' walk in, I 'm feared I 'd be
foolish ernuff an' weak ernuff to forgive 'im an'
take 'im back ag'in." With a bound, uncle Wellington was away
from the crack in the wall. As he ran round the
house he passed the wood-pile and snatched
up an armful of pieces. A moment later he threw
open the door. "Ole 'oman," he exclaimed, "here's dat wood
you tol' me ter fetch in! Why, elder," he said to
the preacher, who had started from his seat with
surprise, "w'at's yo' hurry? Won't you stay an'
hab some supper wid us?"
MARY MYROVER'S friends were
somewhat surprised when she began to teach a
colored school. Miss Myrover's friends are
mentioned here, because nowhere more than in a
Southern town is public opinion a force which
cannot be lightly contravened. Public opinion,
however, did not oppose Miss Myrover's
teaching colored children; in fact, all the colored
public schools in town - and there were
several - were taught by white teachers, and had
been so taught since the State had undertaken to
provide free public instruction for all children
within its boundaries. Previous to that time, there
had been a Freedman's Bureau school and a
Presbyterian missionary school, but these had
been withdrawn when the need for them became
less pressing. The colored people of the town
had been for some time agitating their right to
teach their own schools, but as yet the claim had
not been conceded.
The reason Miss Myrover's course created
some surprise was not, therefore, the fact that a
Southern white woman should teach a colored
school; it lay in the fact that up to this time no
woman of just her quality had taken up such
work. Most of the teachers of colored schools
were not of those who had constituted the
aristocracy of the old régime; they might be said
rather to represent the new order of things, in
which labor was in time to become honorable,
and men were, after a somewhat longer time, to
depend, for their place in society, upon
themselves rather than upon their ancestors.
Mary Myrover belonged to one of the proudest
of the old families. Her ancestors had been
people of distinction in Virginia before a collateral
branch of the main stock had settled in North
Carolina. Before the war, they had been able to
live up to their pedigree; but the war brought sad
changes. Miss Myrover's father - the Colonel
Myrover who led a gallant but desperate charge
at Vicksburg - had fallen on the battlefield, and
his tomb in the white cemetery was a shrine for
the family. On the Confederate Memorial Day,
no other grave was so profusely decorated with
flowers, and,
in the oration pronounced, the name of Colonel
Myrover was always used to illustrate the highest
type of patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice. Miss
Myrover's brother, too, had fallen in the conflict;
but his bones lay in some unknown trench, with
those of a thousand others who had fallen on the
same field. Ay, more, her lover, who had hoped
to come home in the full tide of victory and claim
his bride as a reward for gallantry, had shared the
fate of her father and brother. When the war was
over, the remnant of the family found itself
involved in the common ruin, - more deeply
involved, indeed, than some others; for Colonel
Myrover had believed in the ultimate triumph of
his cause, and had invested most of his wealth in
Confederate bonds, which were now only so
much waste paper. There had been a little left. Mrs. Myrover was
thrifty, and had laid by a few hundred dollars,
which she kept in the house to meet unforeseen
contingencies. There remained, too, their home,
with an ample garden and a well-stocked
orchard, besides a considerable tract of country
land, partly cleared, but productive of very little
revenue.
With their shrunken resources, Miss Myrover
and her mother were able to hold up their heads
without embarrassment for some years after the
close of the war. But when things were adjusted
to the changed conditions, and the stream of life
began to flow more vigorously in the new
channels, they saw themselves in danger of
dropping behind, unless in some way they could
add to their meagre income. Miss Myrover
looked over the field of employment, never very
wide for women in the South, and found it
occupied. The only available position she could
be supposed prepared to fill, and which she
could take without distinct loss of caste, was that
of a teacher, and there was no vacancy except in
one of the colored schools. Even teaching was a
doubtful experiment; it was not what she would
have preferred, but it was the best that could be
done. "I don't like it, Mary," said her mother. "It's a
long step from owning such people to teaching
them. What do they need with education? It will
only make them unfit for work." "They're free now, mother, and perhaps they'll
work better if they're taught something.
Besides, it 's only a business arrangement,
and doesn't involve any closer contact than we
have with our servants." "Well, I should say not!" sniffed the old lady.
"Not one of them will ever dare to presume on
your position to take any liberties with us. I'll see to that." Miss Myrover began her work as a teacher in
the autumn, at the opening of the school year. It
was a novel experience at first. Though there had
always been negro servants in the house, and
though on the streets colored people were more
numerous than those of her own race, and though
she was so familiar with their dialect that she
might almost be said to speak it, barring certain
characteristic grammatical inaccuracies, she had
never been brought in personal contact with so
many of them at once as when she confronted the
fifty or sixty faces - of colors ranging from a
white almost as clear as her own to the darkest
livery of the sun - which were gathered in the
schoolroom on the morning when she began her
duties. Some of the inherited prejudice of her
caste, too, made itself felt, though she tried to
repress any outward sign of it; and she could
perceive that the children
were not altogether responsive; they,
likewise, were not entirely free from antagonism.
The work was unfamiliar to her. She was not
physically very strong, and at the close of the first
day went home with a splitting headache. If she
could have resigned then and there without
causing comment or annoyance to others, she
would have felt it a privilege to do so. But a
night's rest banished her headache and improved
her spirits, and the next morning she went to her
work with renewed vigor, fortified by the
experience of the first day. Miss Myrover's second day was more
satisfactory. She had some natural talent for
organization, though hitherto unaware of it, and in
the course of the day she got her classes formed
and lessons under way. In a week or two she
began to classify her pupils in her own mind, as
bright or stupid, mischievous or well behaved,
lazy or industrious, as the case might be, and to
regulate her discipline accordingly. That she had
come of a long line of ancestors who had
exercised authority and mastership was perhaps
not without its effect upon her character, and
enabled her more readily to maintain good
order in the school. When she was fairly broken
in, she found the work rather to her liking, and
derived much pleasure from such success as she
achieved as a teacher. It was natural that she should be more
attracted to some of her pupils than to others.
Perhaps her favorite - or, rather, the one she
liked best, for she was too fair and just for
conscious favoritism - was Sophy Tucker. Just
the ground for the teacher's liking for Sophy
might not at first be apparent. The girl was far
from the whitest of Miss Myrover's pupils; in fact,
she was one of the darker ones. She was not the
brightest in intellect, though she always tried to
learn her lessons. She was not the best dressed,
for her mother was a poor widow, who went out
washing and scrubbing for a living. Perhaps the
real tie between them was Sophy's intense
devotion to the teacher. It had manifested itself
almost from the first day of the school, in the rapt
look of admiration Miss Myrover always saw on
the little black face turned toward her. In it there
was nothing of envy, nothing of regret; nothing
but worship for the beautiful white lady - she was
not especially handsome, but to Sophy her beauty was
almost divine - who had come to teach her. If
Miss Myrover dropped a book, Sophy was the
first to spring and pick it up; if she wished a chair
moved, Sophy seemed to anticipate her wish;
and so of all the numberless little services that
can be rendered in a schoolroom. Miss Myrover was fond of flowers, and liked
to have them about her. The children soon
learned of this taste of hers, and kept the vases
on her desk filled with blossoms during their
season. Sophy was perhaps the most active in
providing them. If she could not get garden
flowers, she would make excursions to the
woods in the early morning, and bring in great
dew-laden bunches of bay, or jasmine, or some
other fragrant forest flower which she knew the
teacher loved. "When I die, Sophy," Miss Myrover said to
the child one day, "I want to be covered with
roses. And when they bury me, I'm sure I shall
rest better if my grave is banked with flowers,
and roses are planted at my head and at my
feet." Miss Myrover was at first amused at Sophy's
devotion; but when she grew more accustomed
to it, she found it rather to her liking.
It had a sort of flavor of the old régime, and she
felt, when she bestowed her kindly notice upon
her little black attendant, some of the feudal
condescension of the mistress toward the slave.
She was kind to Sophy, and permitted her to
play the rôle she had assumed, which caused
sometimes a little jealousy among the other girls.
Once she gave Sophy a yellow ribbon which she
took from her own hair. The child carried it
home, and cherished it as a priceless treasure, to
be worn only on the greatest occasions. Sophy had a rival in her attachment to the
teacher, but the rivalry was altogether friendly.
Miss Myrover had a little dog, a white spaniel,
answering to the name of Prince. Prince was a
dog of high degree, and would have very little to
do with the children of the school; he made an
exception, however, in the case of Sophy, whose
devotion for his mistress he seemed to
comprehend. He was a clever dog, and could
fetch and carry, sit up on his haunches, extend his
paw to shake hands, and possessed several other
canine accomplishments. He was very fond of his
mistress, and always, unless shut up at home,
accompanied her to school, where he spent most of
his time lying under the teacher's desk or, in cold
weather, by the stove, except when he would go
out now and then and chase an imaginary rabbit
round the yard, presumably for exercise. At school Sophy and Prince vied with each
other in their attentions to Miss Myrover. But
when school was over, Prince went away with
her, and Sophy stayed behind; for Miss Myrover
was white and Sophy was black, which they both
understood perfectly well. Miss Myrover taught
the colored children, but she could not be seen
with them in public. If they occasionally met her
on the street, they did not expect her to speak to
them, unless she happened to be alone and no
other white person was in sight. If any of the
children felt slighted, she was not aware of it, for
she intended no slight; she had not been brought
up to speak to negroes on the street, and she
could not act differently from other people. And
though she was a woman of sentiment and
capable of deep feeling, her training had been such
that she hardly expected to find in those of darker
hue than herself the same susceptibility - varying
in degree, perhaps, but yet the same in kind -
that gave to her own life the alternations of
feeling that made it most worth living. Once Miss Myrover wished to carry home a
parcel of books. She had the bundle in her hand
when Sophy came up. "Lemme tote yo' bundle fer yer, Miss Ma'y?"
she asked eagerly. " I'm gwine yo' way." "Thank you, Sophy," was the reply. "I'll be
glad if you will." Sophy followed the teacher at a respectful
distance. When they reached Miss Myrover's
home, Sophy carried the bundle to the doorstep,
where Miss Myrover took it and thanked her. Mrs. Myrover came out on the piazza as
Sophy was moving away. She said, in the child's
hearing, and perhaps with the intention that she
should hear: "Mary, I wish you wouldn't let
those little darkeys follow you to the house. I
don't want them in the yard. I should think you 'd
have enough of them all day." "Very well, mother," replied her daughter. "I
won't bring any more of them. The child was only
doing me a favor." Mrs. Myrover was an invalid, and opposition
or irritation of any kind brought on nervous
paroxysms that made her miserable, and made
life a burden to the rest of the household, so that
Mary seldom crossed her whims. She did not
bring Sophy to the house again, nor did Sophy
again offer her services as porter. One day in spring Sophy brought her teacher
a bouquet of yellow roses. "Dey come off'n my own bush, Miss Ma'y,"
she said proudly, "an' I did n' let nobody e'se
pull 'em, but saved 'em all fer you, 'cause I know
you likes roses so much. I'm gwine bring 'em all
ter you as long as dey las'." "Thank you, Sophy," said the teacher; "you
are a very good girl." For another year Mary Myrover taught the
colored school, and did excellent service. The
children made rapid progress under her tuition,
and learned to love her well; for they saw and
appreciated, as well as children could, her fidelity
to a trust that she might have slighted, as some
others did, without much fear of criticism.
Toward the end of her second year she sickened,
and after a brief illness died. Old Mrs. Myrover was inconsolable. She
ascribed her daughter's death to her labors as
teacher of negro children. Just how the color of
the pupils had produced the fatal effects she did
not stop to explain. But she was too old, and had
suffered too deeply from the war, in body and
mind and estate, ever to reconcile herself to the
changed order of things following the return of
peace; and, with an unsound yet perfectly
explainable logic, she visited some of her
displeasure upon those who had profited most,
though passively, by her losses. "I always feared something would happen to
Mary," she said. "It seemed unnatural for her to
be wearing herself out teaching little negroes who
ought to have been working for her. But the
world has hardly been a fit place to live in since
the war, and when I follow her, as I must before
long, I shall not be sorry to go." She gave strict orders that no colored people
should be admitted to the house. Some of her
friends heard of this, and remonstrated. They
knew the teacher was loved by the pupils, and
felt that sincere respect from the humble would
be a worthy tribute to the proudest. But Mrs.
Myrover was obdurate.
"They had my daughter when she was alive,"
she said, "and they've killed her. But she 's mine
now, and I won't have them come near her. I
don't want one of them at the funeral or
anywhere around." For a month before Miss Myrover's death
Sophy had been watching her rosebush - the one
that bore the yellow roses - or the first buds of
spring, and, when these appeared, had awaited
impatiently their gradual unfolding. But not until
her teacher's death had they become full-blown
roses. When Miss Myrover died, Sophy
determined to pluck the roses and lay them on
her coffin. Perhaps, she thought, they might even
put them in her hand or on her breast. For Sophy
remembered Miss Myrover's thanks and praise
when she had brought her the yellow roses the
spring before. On the morning of the day set for the funeral,
Sophy washed her face until it shone, combed
and brushed her hair with painful
conscientiousness, put on her best frock, plucked
her yellow roses, and, tying them with the
treasured ribbon her teacher had given her, set
out for Miss Myrover's home. She went round to the side gate - the
house stood on a corner - and stole up the path
to the kitchen. A colored woman, whom she did
not know, came to the door. "W'at yer want, chile?" she inquired. "Kin I see Miss Ma'y?" asked Sophy timidly. "I don't know, honey. Ole Miss Myrover say
she don't want no cullud folks roun' de house
endyoin' dis fun'al. I'll look an' see if she 's
roun' de front room, whar de co'pse is. You sed
down heah an' keep still, an' ef she 's upstairs
maybe I kin git yer in dere a minute. Ef I can't, I
kin put yo' bokay 'mongs' de res', whar she won't
know nuthin' erbout it." A moment after she had gone, there was a
step in the hall, and old Mrs. Myrover came into
the kitchen. "Dinah!" she said in a peevish tone; "Dinah! " Receiving no answer, Mrs. Myrover peered
around the kitchen, and caught sight of Sophy. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. "I - I 'm-m waitin' ter see de cook, ma'am,"
stammered Sophy.
"The cook is n't here now. I don't know
where she is. Besides, my daughter is to be
buried to-day, and I won't have any one visiting
the servants until the funeral is over. Come back
some other day, or see the cook at her own
home in the evening." She stood waiting for the child to go, and
under the keen glance of her eyes Sophy, feeling
as though she had been caught in some
disgraceful act, hurried down the walk and out of
the gate, with her bouquet in her hand. "Dinah," said Mrs. Myrover, when the cook
came back,"I don't want any strange people
admitted here to-day. The house will be full of
our friends, and we have no room for others." "Yas 'm," said the cook. She understood
perfectly what her mistress meant; and what the
cook thought about her mistress was a matter of
no consequence. The funeral services were held at St. Paul's
Episcopal Church, where the Myrovers had
always worshiped. Quite a number of Miss
Myrover's pupils went to the church to attend the
services. The building was not a large one. There
was a small gallery at the rear, to which
colored people were admitted, if they chose to
come, at ordinary services; and those who
wished to be present at the funeral supposed that
the usual custom would prevail. They were
therefore surprised, when they went to the side
entrance, by which colored people gained access
to the gallery stairs, to be met by an usher who
barred their passage. "I 'm sorry," he said, "but I have had orders to
admit no one until the friends of the family have
all been seated. If you wish to wait until the white
people have all gone in, and there 's any room
left, you may be able to get into the back part of
the gallery. Of course I can't tell yet whether
there 'll be any room or not." Now the statement of the usher was a very
reasonable one; but, strange to say, none of the
colored people chose to remain except Sophy.
She still hoped to use her floral offering for its
destined end, in some way, though she did not
know just how. She waited in the yard until the
church was filled with white people, and a
number who could not gain admittance were
standing about the doors. Then she went round
to the side of the church, and, depositing her
bouquet carefully
on an old mossy gravestone, climbed up on
the projecting sill of a window near the chancel.
The window was of stained glass, of somewhat
ancient make. The church was old, had indeed
been built in colonial times, and the stained glass
had been brought from England. The design of
the window showed Jesus blessing little children.
Time had dealt gently with the window, but just
at the feet of the figure of Jesus a small triangular
piece of glass had been broken out. To this
aperture Sophy applied her eyes, and through it
saw and heard what she could of the services
within. Before the chancel, on trestles draped in
black, stood the sombre casket in which lay all
that was mortal of her dear teacher. The top of
the casket was covered with flowers; and lying
stretched out underneath it she saw Miss
Myrover's little white dog, Prince. He had
followed the body to the church, and, slipping in
unnoticed among the mourners, had taken his
place, from which no one had the heart to
remove him. The white-robed rector read the solemn
service for the dead, and then delivered a brief
address, in which he dwelt upon the
uncertainty of life, and, to the believer, the certain
blessedness of eternity. He spoke of Miss
Myrover's kindly spirit, and, as an illustration of
her love and self-sacrifice for others, referred to
her labors as a teacher of the poor ignorant
negroes who had been placed in their midst by an
all-wise Providence, and whom it was their duty
to guide and direct in the station in which God
had put them. Then the organ pealed, a prayer
was said, and the long cortége moved from the
church to the cemetery, about half a mile away,
where the body was to be interred. When the services were over, Sophy sprang
down from her perch, and, taking her flowers,
followed the procession. She did not walk with
the rest, but at a proper and respectful distance
from the last mourner. No one noticed the little
black girl with the bunch of yellow flowers, or
thought of her as interested in the funeral. The cortége reached the cemetery and filed
slowly through the gate; but Sophy stood
outside, looking at a small sign in white letters on
a black background: - "Notice.This cemetery is for white people
only. Others please keep out."
Sophy, thanks to Miss Myrover's painstaking
instruction, could read this sign very distinctly. In
fact, she had often read it before. For Sophy was
a child who loved beauty, in a blind, groping sort
of way, and had sometimes stood by the fence of
the cemetery and looked through at the green
mounds and shaded walks and blooming flowers
within, and wished that she might walk among
them. She knew, too, that the little sign on the
gate, though so courteously worded, was no
mere formality; for she had heard how a colored
man, who had wandered into the cemetery on a
hot night and fallen asleep on the flat top of a
tomb, had been arrested as a vagrant and fined
five dollars, which he had worked out on the
streets, with a ball-and-chain attachment, at
twenty-five cents a day. Since that time the
cemetery gate had been locked at night. So Sophy stayed outside, and looked through
the fence. Her poor bouquet had begun to droop
by this time, and the yellow ribbon had lost some
of its freshness. Sophy could see the rector
standing by the grave, the mourners gathered
round; she could faintly distinguish the solemn
words with
"FOR WHITE PEOPLE ONLY. OTHERS PLEASE KEEP OUT"
which ashes were committed to ashes, and dust
to dust. She heard the hollow thud of the earth
falling on the coffin; and she leaned against the
iron fence, sobbing softly, until the grave was
filled and rounded off, and the wreaths and other
floral pieces were disposed upon it. When the
mourners began to move toward the gate, Sophy
walked slowly down the street, in a direction
opposite to that taken by most of the people who
came out. When they had all gone away, and the sexton
had come out and locked the gate behind him,
Sophy crept back. Her roses were faded now,
and from some of them the petals had fallen. She
stood there irresolute, loath to leave with her
heart's desire unsatisfied, when, as her eyes
sought again the teacher's last resting-place, she
saw lying beside the new-made grave what
looked like a small bundle of white wool.
Sophy's eyes lighted up with a sudden glow. "Prince! Here, Prince!" she called. The little dog rose, and trotted down to the
gate. Sophy pushed the poor bouquet between
the iron bars. "Take that ter Miss Ma'y, Prince,"
she said, "that's a good doggie."
The dog wagged his tail intelligently, took the
bouquet carefully in his mouth, carried it to his
mistress's grave, and laid it among the other
flowers. The bunch of roses was so small that
from where she stood Sophy could see only a
dash of yellow against the white background of
the mass of flowers. When Prince had performed his mission he
turned his eyes toward Sophy inquiringly, and
when she gave him a nod of approval lay down
and resumed his watch by the graveside. Sophy
looked at him a moment with a feeling very much
like envy, and then turned and moved slowly
away.
WITHIN a low clapboarded hut, with an
open front, a forge was glowing. In front a
blacksmith was shoeing a horse, a sleek,
well-kept animal with the signs of good blood and
breeding. A young mulatto stood by and handed
the blacksmith such tools as he needed from time
to time. A group of negroes were sitting around,
some in the shadow of the shop, one in the full
glare of the sunlight. A gentleman was seated in a
buggy a few yards away, in the shade of a
spreading elm. The horse had loosened a shoe,
and Colonel Thornton, who was a lover of fine
horseflesh, and careful of it, had stopped at Ben
Davis's blacksmith shop, as soon as he
discovered the loose shoe, to have it fastened
on. "All right, Kunnel," the blacksmith called out.
"Tom," he said, addressing the young man,
"he'p me hitch up."
Colonel Thornton alighted from the buggy,
looked at the shoe, signified his approval of the
job, and stood looking on while the blacksmith
and his assistant harnessed the horse to the
buggy. "Dat's a mighty fine whip yer got dere,
Kunnel," said Ben, while the young man was
tightening the straps of the harness on the
opposite side of the horse. "I wush I had one
like it. Where kin yer git dem whips?" "My brother brought me this from New
York," said the Colonel. "You can't buy them
down here." The whip in question was a handsome one.
The handle was wrapped with interlacing threads
of variegated colors, forming an elaborate
pattern, the lash being dark green. An octagonal
ornament of glass was set in the end of the
handle. "It cert'n'y is fine," said Ben; "I wish I
had one like it." He looked at the whip longingly
as Colonel Thornton drove away. " 'Pears ter me Ben gittin' mighty blooded,"
said one of the bystanders, "drivin' a hoss an'
buggy, an' wantin' a whip like Colonel
Thornton's." "What 's de reason I can't hab a hoss an'
buggy an' a whip like Kunnel Tho'nton's, ef I pay
fer 'em?" asked Ben. "We colored folks never
had no chance ter git nothin' befo' de wah, but ef
eve'y nigger in dis town had a tuck keer er his
money sence de wah, like I has, an' bought as
much lan' as I has, de niggers might 'a' got half de
lan' by dis time," he went on, giving a finishing
blow to a horseshoe, and throwing it on the
ground to cool. Carried away by his own eloquence, he did
not notice the approach of two white men who
came up the street from behind him. "An' ef you niggers," he continued, raking the
coals together over a fresh bar of iron, "would
stop wastin' yo' money on 'scursions to put
money in w'ite folks' pockets, an' stop buildin'
fine chu'ches, an' buil' houses fer yo'se'ves, you'd
git along much faster." "You're talkin' sense, Ben," said one of the
white men. "Yo'r people will never be respected
till they 've got property." The conversation took another turn. The white
men transacted their business and went away.
The whistle of a neighboring steam sawmill blew
a raucous blast for the hour of noon, and the
loafers shuffled away in different directions.
"You kin go ter dinner, Tom," said the
blacksmith. "An' stop at de gate w'en yer go by
my house, and tell Nancy I'll be dere in 'bout
twenty minutes. I got ter finish dis yer plough
p'int fus'." The young man walked away. One would
have supposed, from the rapidity with which he
walked, that he was very hungry. A quarter of an
hour later the blacksmith dropped his hammer,
pulled off his leather apron, shut the front door of
the shop, and went home to dinner. He came into
the house out of the fervent heat, and, throwing
off his straw hat, wiped his brow vigorously with
a red cotton handkerchief. "Dem collards smells good," he said, sniffing
the odor that came in through the kitchen door,
as his good-looking yellow wife opened it to
enter the room where he was. "I 've got a
monst'us good appetite ter-day. I feels good, too.
I paid Majah Ransom de intrus' on de mortgage
dis mawnin' an' a hund'ed dollahs besides, an' I
spec's ter hab de balance ready by de fust of
nex' Jiniwary; an' den we won't owe nobody a
cent. I tell yer dere ain' nothin' like propputy ter
make a pusson feel like a man. But w'at 's de
matter wid yer, Nancy ? Is sump'n' skeered
yer?" The woman did seem excited and ill at ease.
There was a heaving of the full bust, a quickened
breathing, that betokened suppressed
excitement. "I - I - jes' seen a rattlesnake out in de
gyahden," she stammered. The blacksmith ran to the door. "Which way?
Whar wuz he?" he cried. He heard a rustling in the bushes at one side of
the garden, and the sound of a breaking twig,
and, seizing a hoe which stood by the door, he
sprang toward the point from which the sound
came. "No, no," said the woman hurriedly, "it wuz
over here," and she directed her husband's
attention to the other side of the garden. The blacksmith, with the uplifted hoe, its sharp
blade gleaming in the sunlight, peered cautiously
among the collards and tomato plants, listening
all the while for the ominous rattle, but found
nothing. "I reckon he's got away," he said, as he set
the hoe up again by the door. "Whar's de
chillen?" he asked with some anxiety. "Is dey
playin' in de woods?"
"No," answered his wife, "dey 've gone ter
de spring." The spring was on the opposite side of the
garden from that on which the snake was said to
have been seen, so the blacksmith sat down and
fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan until the
dinner was served. "Yer ain't quite on time ter-day, Nancy," he
said, glancing up at the clock on the mantel, after
the edge of his appetite had been taken off. "Got
ter make time ef yer wanter make money. Didn't
Tom tell yer I'd be heah in twenty minutes?" "No," she said; "I seen him goin' pas'; he
did n' say nothin'." "I dunno w'at's de matter wid dat boy,"
mused the blacksmith over his apple dumpling.
"He 's gittin' mighty keerless heah lately; mus' hab
sump'n' on 'is min', - some gal' I reckon." The children had come in while he was
speaking, - a slender, shapely boy, yellow like
his mother, a girl several years younger, dark like
her father: both bright-looking children and
neatly dressed. "I seen cousin Tom down by de spring," said
the little girl, as she lifted off the pail
of water that had been balanced on her head.
"He come out er de woods jest ez we wuz fillin'
our buckets." "Yas," insisted the blacksmith, "he 's got
some gal on his min'." The case of the State of North Carolina vs.
Ben Davis was called. The accused was led into
court, and took his seat in the prisoner's dock. "Prisoner at the bar, stand up." The prisoner, pale and anxious, stood up. The
clerk read the indictment, in which it was charged
that the defendant by force and arms had entered
the barn of one G. W. Thornton, and feloniously
taken therefrom one whip, of the value of fifteen
dollars. "Are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the
judge. "Not guilty, yo' Honah; not guilty, Jedge. I
never tuck de whip." The State's attorney opened the case. He was
young and zealous. Recently elected to the
office, this was his first batch of cases, and he
was anxious to make as good a record as
possible. He had no doubt of the prisoner's guilt.
There had been a great deal of petty thieving in
the county, and several gentlemen had suggested
to him the necessity for greater severity in
punishing it. The jury were all white men. The
prosecuting attorney stated the case. "We expect to show, gentlemen of the jury, the
facts set out in the indictment, - not altogether by
direct proof, but by a chain of circumstantial
evidence which is stronger even than the testimony
of eyewitnesses. Men might lie, but circumstances
cannot. We expect to show that the defendant is a
man of dangerous character, a surly, impudent
fellow; a man whose views of property are
prejudicial to the welfare of society, and who has
been heard to assert that half the property which
is owned in this county has been stolen, and that, if
justice were done, the white people ought to
divide up the land with the negroes; in other
words, a negro nihilist, a communist, a secret
devotee of Tom Paine and Voltaire, a pupil of the
anarchist propaganda, which, if not checked by
the stern hand of the law, will fasten its insidious
fangs on our social system, and drag it down to
ruin."
"We object, may it please your Honor," said
the defendant's attorney." The prosecutor
should defer his argument until the testimony is
in." "Confine yourself to the facts, Major," said
the court mildly. The prisoner sat with half-open mouth,
overwhelmed by this flood of eloquence. He had
never heard of Tom Paine or Voltaire. He had no
conception of what a nihilist or an anarchist might
be, and could not have told the difference
between a propaganda and a potato. "We expect to show, may it please the court,
that the prisoner had been employed by Colonel
Thornton to shoe a horse; that the horse was
taken to the prisoner's blacksmith shop by a
servant of Colonel Thornton's; that, this servant
expressing a desire to go somewhere on an
errand before the horse had been shod, the
prisoner volunteered to return the horse to
Colonel Thornton's stable; that he did so, and the
following morning the whip in question was
missing; that, from circumstances, suspicion
naturally fell upon the prisoner, and a search was
made of his shop, where the whip was found
secreted; that the prisoner denied that the whip
was there, but when confronted with the
evidence of his crime, showed by his confusion
that he was guilty beyond a peradventure." The prisoner looked more anxious; so much
eloquence could not but be effective with the
jury. The attorney for the defendant answered
briefly, denying the defendant's guilt, dwelling
upon his previous good character for honesty,
and begging the jury not to prejudge the case,
but to remember that the law is merciful, and that
the benefit of the doubt should be given to the
prisoner. The prisoner glanced nervously at the jury.
There was nothing in their faces to indicate the
effect upon them of the opening statements. It
seemed to the disinterested listeners as if the
defendant's attorney had little confidence in his
client's cause. Colonel Thornton took the stand and testified
to his ownership of the whip, the place where it
was kept, its value, and the fact that it had
disappeared. The whip was produced in court
and identified by the witness. He also testified to
the conversation at the blacksmith
shop in the course of which the prisoner
had expressed a desire to possess a similar whip.
The cross-examination was brief, and no attempt
was made to shake the Colonel's testimony. The next witness was the constable who had
gone with a warrant to search Ben's shop. He
testified to the circumstances under which the
whip was found. "He wuz brazen as a mule at fust, an' wanted
ter git mad about it. But when we begun ter turn
over that pile er truck in the cawner, he kinder
begun ter trimble; when the whip-handle stuck
out, his eyes commenced ter grow big, an' when
we hauled the whip out he turned pale ez ashes,
an' begun to swear he did n' take the whip an'
did n' know how it got thar." "You may cross-examine," said the
prosecuting attorney triumphantly. The prisoner felt the weight of the testimony,
and glanced furtively at the jury, and then
appealingly at his lawyer. "You say that Ben denied that he had stolen
the whip," said the prisoner's attorney, on
cross-examination." Did it not occur to you that
what you took for brazen impudence
might have been but the evidence of conscious
innocence?" The witness grinned incredulously, revealing
thereby a few blackened fragments of teeth. "I've tuck up more 'n a hundred niggers fer
stealin', Kurnel, an' I never seed one yit that did n'
'ny it ter the las'." "Answer my question. Might not the witness's
indignation have been a manifestation of
conscious innocence? Yes or no?" "Yes, it mought, an' the moon mought
fall - but it don't." Further cross-examination did not weaken the
witness's testimony, which was very damaging,
and every one in the court room felt instinctively
that a strong defense would be required to break
down the State's case. "The State rests," said the prosecuting
attorney, with a ring in his voice which spoke of
certain victory. There was a temporary lull in the proceedings,
during which a bailiff passed a pitcher of water
and a glass along the line of jurymen. The
defense was then begun. The law in its wisdom did not permit the
defendant to testify in his own behalf. There
were no witnesses to the facts, but several were
called to testify to Ben's good character. The
colored witnesses made him out possessed of all
the virtues. One or two white men testified that
they had never known anything against his
reputation for honesty. The defendant rested his case, and the State
called its witnesses in rebuttal. They were entirely
on the point of character. One testified that he
had heard the prisoner say that, if the negroes
had their rights, they would own at least half the
property. Another testified that he had heard the
defendant say that the negroes spent too much
money on churches, and that they cared a good
deal more for God than God had ever seemed to
care for them. Ben Davis listened to this testimony with
half-open mouth and staring eyes. Now and then he
would lean forward and speak perhaps a word,
when his attorney would shake a warning finger
at him, and he would fall back helplessly, as if
abandoning himself to fate; but for a moment
only, when he would resume his puzzled look. The arguments followed. The prosecuting
attorney briefly summed up the evidence, and
characterized it as almost a mathematical proof
of the prisoner's guilt. He reserved his eloquence
for the closing argument. The defendant's attorney had a headache, and
secretly believed his client guilty. His address
sounded more like an appeal for mercy than a
demand for justice. Then the State's attorney
delivered the maiden argument of his office, the
speech that made his reputation as an orator, and
opened up to him a successful political career. The judge's charge to the jury was a plain,
simple statement of the law as applied to
circumstantial evidence, and the mere statement
of the law foreshadowed the verdict. The eyes of the prisoner were glued to the
jury-box, and he looked more and more like a hunted
animal. In the rear of the crowd of blacks who
filled the back part of the room, partly concealed
by the projecting angle of the fireplace, stood
Tom, the blacksmith's assistant. If the face is the
mirror of the soul, then this man's soul, taken off
its guard in this moment of excitement, was full of
lust and envy and all evil passions. The jury filed out of their box, and into the
jury room behind the judge's stand.
There was a moment of relaxation in the court
room. The lawyers fell into conversation across
the table. The judge beckoned to Colonel
Thornton, who stepped forward, and they
conversed together a few moments. The prisoner
was all eyes and ears in this moment of waiting,
and from an involuntary gesture on the part of the
judge he divined that they were speaking of him.
It is a pity he could not hear what was said. "How do you feel about the case, Colonel?"
asked the judge. "Let him off easy," replied Colonel Thornton.
"He 's the best blacksmith in the county." The business of the court seemed to have
halted by tacit consent, in anticipation of a quick
verdict. The suspense did not last long. Scarcely
ten minutes had elapsed when there was a rap on
the door, the officer opened it, and the jury came
out. The prisoner, his soul in his eyes, sought their
faces, but met no reassuring glance; they were all
looking away from him. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed
upon a verdict?" "We have," responded the foreman. The
clerk of the court stepped forward and took the
fateful slip from the foreman's hand. The clerk read the verdict: "We, the jury
impaneled and sworn to try the issues in this
cause, do find the prisoner guilty as charged in
the indictment." There was a moment of breathless silence.
Then a wild burst of grief from the prisoner's
wife, to which his two children, not understanding
it all, but vaguely conscious of some calamity,
added their voices in two long, discordant wails,
which would have been ludicrous had they not
been heart-rending. The face of the young man in the back of the
room expressed relief and badly concealed
satisfaction. The prisoner fell back upon the seat
from which he had half risen in his anxiety, and
his dark face assumed an ashen hue. What he
thought could only be surmised. Perhaps,
knowing his innocence, he had not believed
conviction possible; perhaps, conscious of guilt,
he dreaded the punishment, the extent of which
was optional with the judge, within very wide
limits. Only one other person present knew
whether or not he was guilty, and that other had
slunk furtively from the court room.
Some of the spectators wondered why there
should be so much ado about convicting a negro
of stealing a buggy-whip. They had forgotten
their own interest of the moment before. They
did not realize out of what trifles grow the
tragedies of life. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, the hour
for adjournment, when the verdict was returned.
The judge nodded to the bailiff. "Oyez, oyez! this court is now adjourned until
ten o'clock to-morrow morning," cried the bailiff
in a singsong voice. The judge left the bench, the
jury filed out of the box, and a buzz of
conversation filled the court room. "Brace up, Ben, brace up, my boy," said the
defendant's lawyer, half apologetically. "I did
what I could for you, but you can never tell what
a jury will do. You won't be sentenced till
to-morrow morning. In the meantime I'll speak to
the judge and try to get him to be easy with you.
He may let you off with a light fine." The negro pulled himself together, and by an
effort listened. "Thanky, Majah," was all he said. He
seemed to be thinking of something far away.
He barely spoke to his wife when she
frantically threw herself on him, and clung to his
neck, as he passed through the side room on his
way to jail. He kissed his children mechanically,
and did not reply to the soothing remarks made
by the jailer. There was a good deal of excitement in
town the next morning. Two white men stood
by the post office talking. "Did yer hear the news?" "No, what wuz it?" "Ben Davis tried ter break jail las' night." "You don't say so! What a fool! He ain't
be'n sentenced yit." "Well, now," said the other, "I've knowed
Ben a long time, an' he wuz a right good nigger.
I kinder found it hard ter b'lieve he did steal that
whip. But what 's a man's feelin's ag'in' the proof?" They spoke on awhile, using the past tense as
if they were speaking of a dead man. "Ef I know Jedge Hart, Ben 'll wish he had
slep' las' night, 'stidder tryin' ter break out'n
jail."
At ten o'clock the prisoner was brought into
court. He walked with shambling gait, bent at the
shoulders, hopelessly, with downcast eyes, and
took his seat with several other prisoners who
had been brought in for sentence. His wife,
accompanied by the children, waited behind him,
and a number of his friends were gathered in the
court room. The first prisoner sentenced was a young white
man, convicted several days before of
manslaughter. The deed was done in the heat of
passion, under circumstances of great
provocation, during a quarrel about a woman.
The prisoner was admonished of the sanctity of
human life, and sentenced to one year in the
penitentiary. The next case was that of a young clerk,
eighteen or nineteen years of age, who had
committed a forgery in order to procure the
means to buy lottery tickets. He was well
connected, and the case would not have been
prosecuted if the judge had not refused to allow
it to be nolled, and, once brought to trial, a
conviction could not have been avoided. "You are a young man," said the judge
gravely, yet not unkindly, "and your life is
yet before you. I regret that you should have
been led into evil courses by the lust for
speculation, so dangerous in its tendencies, so
fruitful of crime and misery. I am led to believe
that you are sincerely penitent, and that, after
such punishment as the law cannot remit without
bringing itself into contempt, you will see the
error of your ways and follow the strict path of
rectitude. Your fault has entailed distress not only
upon yourself, but upon your relatives, people of
good name and good family, who suffer as
keenly from your disgrace as you yourself. Partly
out of consideration for their feelings, and partly
because I feel that, under the circumstances, the
law will be satisfied by the penalty I shall inflict, I
sentence you to imprisonment in the county jail
for six months, and a fine of one hundred dollars
and the costs of this action." "The jedge talks well, don't he? " whispered
one spectator to another. "Yes, and kinder likes ter hear hisse'f talk,"
answered the other. "Ben Davis, stand up," ordered the judge. He might have said "Ben Davis, wake up," for
the jailer had to touch the prisoner on the
shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. He stood
up, and something of the hunted look came again
into his eyes, which shifted under the stern glance
of the judge. "Ben Davis, you have been convicted of
larceny, after a fair trial before twelve good men
of this county. Under the testimony, there can be
no doubt of your guilt. The case is an aggravated
one. You are not an ignorant, shiftless fellow, but
a man of more than ordinary intelligence among
your people, and one who ought to know better.
You have not even the poor excuse of having
stolen to satisfy hunger or a physical appetite.
Your conduct is wholly without excuse, and I can
only regard your crime as the result of a
tendency to offenses of this nature, a tendency
which is only too common among your people; a
tendency which is a menace to civilization, a
menace to society itself, for society rests upon
the sacred right of property. Your opinions, too,
have been given a wrong turn; you have been
heard to utter sentiments which, if disseminated
among an ignorant people, would breed
discontent, and give rise to strained relations
between them and their best friends, their old
masters, who understand
their real nature and their real needs,
and to whose justice and enlightened
guidance they can safely trust. Have you
anything to say why sentence should not
be passed upon you?" "Nothin', suh, cep'n dat I did n' take de
whip." "The law, largely, I think, in view of the
peculiar circumstances of your unfortunate
race, has vested a large discretion in courts
as to the extent of the punishment for
offenses of this kind. Taking your case as a
whole, I am convinced that it is one which,
for the sake of the example, deserves a severe
punishment. Nevertheless, I do not feel
disposed to give you the full extent of the law,
which would be twenty years in the penitentiary,1
but, considering the fact that you have
a family, and have heretofore borne a good
reputation in the community, I will impose
upon you the light sentence of imprisonment
for five years in the penitentiary at hard
labor. And I hope that this will be a warning
to you and others who may be similarly
disposed, and that after your sentence has
expired you may lead the life of a law-abiding
citizen." "O Ben! O my husband! O God!"
moaned the poor wife, and tried to press
forward to her husband's side. "Keep back, Nancy, keep back," said the
jailer. "You can see him in jail." Several people were looking at Ben's face.
There was one flash of despair, and then
nothing but a stony blank, behind which he
masked his real feelings, whatever they were. Human character is a compound of
tendencies inherited and habits acquired. In the
anxiety, the fear of disgrace, spoke the
nineteenth century civilization with which Ben
Davis had been more or less closely in touch
during twenty years of slavery and fifteen
years of freedom. In the stolidity with which
he received this sentence for a crime which he
had not committed, spoke who knows what
trait of inherited savagery? For stoicism is
a savage virtue. One morning in June, five years later, a
black man limped slowly along the old
Lumberton plank road; a tall man, whose bowed
shoulders made him seem shorter than he was,
and a face from which it was difficult to guess
his years, for in it the wrinkles and flabbiness
of age were found side by side with firm white
teeth, and eyes not sunken, - eyes bloodshot,
and burning with something, either fever or
passion. Though he limped painfully with
one foot, the other hit the ground impatiently,
like the good horse in a poorly matched team.
As he walked along, he was talking to himself: - "I wonder what dey 'll do w'en I git back?
I wonder how Nancy 's s'ported the fambly
all dese years? Tuck in washin', I s'ppose, -
she was a monst'us good washer an' ironer.
I wonder ef de chillun 'll be too proud ter
recognize deir daddy come back f'um de
penetenchy? I 'spec' Billy must be a big boy
by dis time. He won' b'lieve his daddy ever
stole anything. I'm gwine ter slip roun' an'
s'prise 'em." Five minutes later a face peered cautiously
into the window of what had once been Ben
Davis's cabin - at first an eager face, its
coarseness lit up with the fire of hope; a
moment later a puzzled face; then an anxious,
fearful face as the man stepped away from
the window and rapped at the door. "Is Mis' Davis home?" he asked of the
woman who opened the door. "Mis' Davis don' live here. You er mistook
in de house." "Whose house is dis?" "It b'longs ter my husban', Mr. Smith -
Primus Smith." " 'Scuse me, but I knowed de house some
years ago w'en I wuz here oncet on a visit,
an' it b'longed ter a man name' Ben Davis." "Ben Davis - Ben Davis? - oh yes, I
'member now. Dat wuz de gen'man w'at
wuz sent ter de penitenchy for sump'n or
nether, - sheep-stealin', I b'lieve. Primus,"
she called, "w'at wuz Ben Davis, w'at useter
own dis yer house, sent ter de penitenchy
for?" "Hoss-stealin'," came back the reply in
sleepy accents, from the man seated by the
fireplace. The traveler went on to the next house.
A neat-looking yellow woman came to the
door when he rattled the gate, and stood
looking suspiciously at him. "W'at you want?" she asked.
"Please, ma'am, will you tell me whether
a man name' Ben Davis useter live in dis
neighborhood?" "Useter live in de nex' house; wuz sent
ter de penitenchy fer killin' a man." "Kin yer tell me w'at went wid Mis'
Davis?" "Umph! I 's a 'spectable 'omen, I is, en
don' mix wid dem kind er people. She wuz 'n'
no better 'n her husban'. She tuk up wid a
man dat useter wuk fer Ben, an' dey're livin'
down by de ole wagon-ya'd, where no 'spectable
'omen ever puts her foot." "An' de chillen?" "De gal's dead. Wuz 'n' no better 'n she
oughter be'n. She fell in de crick an' got
drown'; some folks say she wuz 'n' sober
w'en it happen'. De boy tuck atter his
pappy. He wuz 'rested las' week fer shootin'
a w'ite man, an' wuz lynch' de same night.
Dey wa'n't none of 'em no 'count after deir
pappy went ter de penitenchy." "What went wid de proputty?" "Hit wuz sol' fer de mortgage, er de taxes,
er de lawyer, er sump'n - I don' know w'at.
A w'ite man got it." The man with the bundle went on until he
came to a creek that crossed the road. He
descended the sloping bank, and, sitting on a
stone in the shade of a water-oak, took off his
coarse brogans, unwound the rags that served
him in lieu of stockings, and laved in the
cool water the feet that were chafed with
many a weary mile of travel. After five years of unrequited toil, and
unspeakable hardship in convict camps, -
five years of slaving by the side of human
brutes, and of nightly herding with them in
vermin-haunted huts, - Ben Davis had
become like them. For a while he had received
occasional letters from home, but in the shifting
life of the convict camp they had long
since ceased to reach him, if indeed they had
been written. For a year or two, the
consciousness of his innocence had helped to
make him resist the debasing influences that
surrounded him. The hope of shortening his
sentence by good behavior, too, had worked
a similar end. But the transfer from one
contractor to another, each interested in
keeping as long as possible a good worker, had
speedily dissipated any such hope. When
hope took flight, its place was not long
vacant. Despair followed, and black hatred of
all mankind, hatred especially of the man to
whom he attributed all his misfortunes. One
who is suffering unjustly is not apt to indulge
in fine abstractions, nor to balance probabilities.
By long brooding over his wrongs, his
mind became, if not unsettled, at least warped,
and he imagined that Colonel Thornton had
deliberately set a trap into which he had
fallen. The Colonel, he convinced himself,
had disapproved of his prosperity, and had
schemed to destroy it. He reasoned himself
into the belief that he represented in his
person the accumulated wrongs of a whole
race, and Colonel Thornton the race who had
oppressed them. A burning desire for revenge
sprang up in him, and he nursed it
until his sentence expired and he was set at
liberty. What he had learned since reaching
home had changed his desire into a
deadly purpose. When he had again bandaged his feet and
slipped them into his shoes, he looked around
him, and selected a stout sapling from among
the undergrowth that covered the bank of
the stream. Taking from his pocket a huge
clasp-knife, he cut off the length of an ordinary
walking stick and trimmed it. The result
was an ugly-looking bludgeon, a dangerous
weapon when in the grasp of a strong man. With the stick in his hand, he went on
down the road until he approached a large
white house standing some distance back from
the street. The grounds were filled with a
profusion of shrubbery. The negro entered
the gate and secreted himself in the bushes,
at a point where he could hear any one that
might approach. It was near midday, and he had not eaten.
He had walked all night, and had not slept.
The hope of meeting his loved ones had been
meat and drink and rest for him. But as he
sat waiting, outraged nature asserted itself,
and he fell asleep, with his head on the rising
root of a tree, and his face upturned. And as he slept, he dreamed of his childhood;
of an old black mammy taking care of
him in the daytime, and of a younger face,
with soft eyes, which bent over him sometimes
at night, and a pair of arms which
clasped him closely. He dreamed of his past,
- of his young wife, of his bright children.
Somehow his dreams all ran to pleasant
themes for a while. Then they changed again. He dreamed
that he was in the convict camp, and, by an
easy transition, that he was in hell, consumed
with hunger, burning with thirst. Suddenly
the grinning devil who stood over him with
a barbed whip faded away, and a little white
angel came and handed him a drink of water.
As he raised it to his lips the glass slipped,
and he struggled back to consciousness. "Poo' man! Poo' man sick, an' sleepy.
Dolly b'ing f'owers to cover poo' man up.
Poo' man mus' be hungry. W'en Dolly get
him covered up, she go b'ing poo' man some
cake." A sweet little child, as beautiful as a cherub
escaped from Paradise, was standing over him.
At first he scarcely comprehended the words
the baby babbled out. But as they became
clear to him, a novel feeling crept slowly over
his heart. It had been so long since he had
heard anything but curses and stern words of
command, or the ribald songs of obscene
merriment, that the clear tones of this voice
from heaven cooled his calloused heart as the
water of the brook had soothed his blistered
feet. It was so strange, so unwonted a thing,
that he lay there with half-closed eyes while
the child brought leaves and flowers and laid
them on his face and on his breast, and
arranged them with little caressing taps. She moved away, and plucked a flower.
And then she spied another farther on, and
then another, and, as she gathered them, kept
increasing the distance between herself and
the man lying there, until she was several
rods away. Ben Davis watched her through eyes over
which had come an unfamiliar softness.
Under the lingering spell of his dream, her
golden hair, which fell in rippling curls,
seemed like a halo of purity and innocence
and peace, irradiating the atmosphere around
her. It is true the thought occurred to Ben,
vaguely, that through harm to her he might
inflict the greatest punishment upon her
father; but the idea came like a dark shape
that faded away and vanished into nothingness
as soon as it came within the nimbus
that surrounded the child's person. The child was moving on to pluck still
another flower, when there came a sound of
hoof-beats, and Ben was aware that a
horseman, visible through the shrubbery, was
coming along the curved path that led from the
gate to the house. It must be the man he
was waiting for, and now was the time to
wreak his vengeance. He sprang to his feet,
grasped his club, and stood for a moment
irresolute. But either the instinct of the
convict, beaten, driven, and debased, or the
influence of the child, which was still strong
upon him, impelled him, after the first
momentary pause, to flee as though seeking safety. His flight led him toward the little girl,
whom he must pass in order to make his
escape, and as Colonel Thornton turned the
corner of the path he saw a desperate-looking
negro, clad in filthy rags, and carrying in his
hand a murderous bludgeon, running toward
the child, who, startled by the sound of footsteps,
had turned and was looking toward the
approaching man with wondering eyes. A
sickening fear came over the father's heart,
and drawing the ever-ready revolver, which
according to the Southern custom he carried
always upon his person, he fired with
unerring aim. Ben Davis ran a few yards
farther, faltered, threw out his hands, and
fell dead at the child's feet. Some time, we are told, when the cycle of
years has rolled around, there is to be another
golden age, when all men will dwell together
in love and harmony, and when peace
and righteousness shall prevail for a thousand
years. God speed the day, and let not the
shining thread of hope become so enmeshed
in the web of circumstance that we lose sight
of it; but give us here and there, and now
and then, some little foretaste of this golden
age, that we may the more patiently and
hopefully await its coming! Return to Menu Page for The Wife of His Youth... by Charles Waddell Chesnutt Return to Library of Southern Literature Home Page Return to The North Carolina Experience Home Page Return to Documenting the American South Home Page
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Page 132CICELY'S DREAM
I
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"I knew a widow very poor,
Who four small children had;
The eldest was but six years old,
A gentle, modest lad."
"ALWAYS SPEAK THE TRUTH,"
"I knew a widow very poor,
Who" -
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"I knew a widow very poor,
Who four" -
"I knew a widow very poor,
Who four small" -
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Page 168THE PASSING OF GRANDISON
I
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Page 203UNCLE WELLINGTON'S WIVES
I
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"For a' that an' a' that;"
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Page 269THE BOUQUET
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Page 291THE WEB OF CIRCUMSTANCE
I
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1. There are no degrees of larceny in North Carolina, and
the penalty for any offense lies in the discretion of the judge,
to the limit of twenty years.
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