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THE
LIFE
AND
ADVENTURES
OF
JONATHAN
JEFFERSON WHITLAW
OR SCENES ON
THE MISSISSIPPI
BY FRANCES
TROLLOPE
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, 1836
TO THOSE
STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION
IN WHICH
SLAVERY HAS BEEN ABOLISHED
OR NEVER
PERMITTED THESE VOLUMES
ARE
RESPECTIVELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
LONDON, 27
APRIL, 1836
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
First published in 1836 by
Richard Bentley in London in three volumes, then again in that same
year in
Paris by Baudry's European Library, it was next published in 1857, with
a title change, Lynch Law: The Life
and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw. This novel, in
reality, is a
documentary. When it was written the camera, whether for still or
moving pictures, was not yet in use. Instead, it is illustrated by
Auguste Hervieu who accompanied Mrs Trollope and her family to New
Orleans, Louisiana, up the Mississippi to Nashoba, Tennessee, and
Cincinatti,
Ohio. The Englishwoman's novel, published just before the American
Richard Hildreth's The White Slave,
with
that
work
next
were used as models by Harriet Beecher Stowe for
her Uncle Tom's Cabin. As we see in its illustrations by Auguste
Hervieu, which
costume its participants in Empire and Regency style, it is earlier
than Victorian. It is high-waisted Jane Austen but with more vinegar
and more compassion. It draws upon the plays, poems and novels
of Shakespeare, Milton, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett and Scott. It describes the barbarity of racial
lynchings which continue into living memory. I was grateful for the
opportunity to speak of it at the University of Arkansas, fifty years
after the Little Rock Nine had, with great courage, risked their lives
to end segregation in American schools.
We re-publish this novel in honour of Frances Trollope who, with four
other members of her household, her daughter-in-law Theodosia,
Theodosia's father, Joseph Garrow, and Theodosia's half-sister Harriet
Fisher, and their maid, Elizabeth Shinner, are all buried in Florence's
'English' Cemetery. For years these vivid and direct observations of
slavery written into the pages of Jonathan
Jefferson
Whitlaw have been silenced, the book allowed to go out
of print. Nor has the history of the 'English' Cemetery been explored
until recently, to find that it is filled with anti-slavery advocates,
among them, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Southwood Smith,
Theodore Parker, Hiram Powers, Richard Hildreth, and even buried here
is the black slave who at fourteen years of age was brought to Florence
from Nubia and
who was baptized in a Russian Orthodox family with the name of
Nadezhda, which means 'Hope'. Frederick Douglass visited this cemetery,
in particular the graves of Theodore Parker and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, to honour their eloquence that effected his freedom.
Jeannette Marks published, in the year of my birth, a book on Elizabeth
Barrett Browning's Jamaican slave-owning background, The Family of the Barrett. For
years, this book, like Trollope's, was neglected and ignored.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, herself of slave-owning stock and indeed of
slave stock, over-reacted to Frances Trollope's novel as too close to
home. Indeed, the death of one of its heroines was to be like her own,
from an overdose of laudanum. The essay EBB submitted on Fanny to
Hengist Horne's New Spirit of the Age
is an appallingly vicious attack upon her. The two famous women writers
were, in time, to come to be in the same city, Florence, to die there,
and to be buried together in her 'English' Cemetery outside the
medieval walls, along with so many others deeply involved in slavery
and its abolition.
A further reason for my desire to republish this novel, along with
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's anti-slavery poetry, her sonnet to Hiram
Powers' 'Greek Slave', and her 'Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point', is
my own marriage to a descendant of Kentucky Quaker slave-owners. His
aunt's real name 'Bertha Gertrude' was always instead given as the far
more beautiful 'Chloe May', the name of my husband's grandfather's
beloved Black 'Mammy'. We see in Jonathan
Jefferson
Whitlaw the wonderful names, 'Clio, Portia, Phoebe,
Juno'. In my husband's family there were two histories, that they sold
their slaves down river, that they freed them, when they pulled up
stakes and went on to Texas to herd cattle, then, further, to
California at the Gold Rush. My husband from reading Aristotle on women
being less than slaves, scoffingly called me 'Aristotle's creature',
and
considered me sub-human. Trollope's Juno heals those wounds. Once, at
Princeton, the President of their Whig-Clio Club, the oldest debating
society in America, founded in the 1760s, came to my office to ask if
we might be related. I felt like saying 'We share the same name because
of a slave-owner and, yes, we might be related by marriage and less
than marriage'. A ninety-year-old Quaker woman doctor came
bustling up to me at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to ask 'Is Holloway thy name or thy married name', to which I answered
'It is my married name. My Quaker ancestors were Cashes, Frys, Cadburys
and Glorneys from Coventry, Norwich and Dublin, not from Kentucky'.
There is a derogatory word used throughout the novel - but it is only
placed in the mouths of the novel's villains. Among the villains, the
chief one, in fact, though masquerading as hero, a 'whited sepulcrhe',
is Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, whose 'white laws' are those of racial
injustice, slavery and lynching. The author and the true heroes and
heroines, black and white, speak instead of 'negro' and 'negress' with
dignity, respect and love. My son, Richard Holloway, photographed the
people of whom Jonathan
David wrote in Together Let Us
Sweetly Live, where the praying and singing bands of blacks are
celebrated and which show the results of such liberating missionary
movements from
early times amongst the slaves. This is the world of Edward and Lucy
Bligh, decades later, almost two centuries later, still celebrating
faith in the midst of despair. Indeed there is a continuum between the
freeing celebrations of people by Frances Wright, Frances Trollope and
Auguste Hervieu,
by James Agee and Evan Walker, by Jonathan David and Richard Holloway,
and by Karen Graffeo in her photographs of the Roma in Europe, which
deserves recognition, not the silencing that has been meted out to this
novel for nearly two centuries.
We shall find Auguste Hervieu and Frances Trollope differing on the
spelling of Mohanna/Mohana Creek, and of Riechland/Reichland. But they
both witness just such a
family shivering with ague on the banks of the Mississippi, Hervieu
sketching them first for Domestic
Manners of the Americans. Indeed that other book by Anthony
Trollope's mother serves
as the Writer's Diary from which this novel is constructed, just as
much as do the Hawthornes' Diaries become Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Romances. Principally, Jonathan
Jefferson Whitlaw is a novel about families, the Whitlaws, the
Steinmarks, the Blighs, amongst the whites, and black families
fractured by slavery, Phebe's family, and Juno's family. Of these we
should read the Steinmark family as an idealized portrait
of Frances Trollope's own household that worked so energetically
against slavery.
A Louisiana Love Scene
ILLUSTRATIONS TO JONATHAN JEFFERSON
WHITLAW
Click on titles for full size images
VOLUME THE FIRST
A LOUISIANA LOVE SCENE
BIRTH OF JONATHAN JEFFERSON WHITLAW
DEPARTURE FROM MOHANNA CREEK
JONATHAN JEFFERSON'S VISIT TO REICHLAND
A STORE AT NATCHEZ
VOLUME THE SECOND
A PLANTER'S LADY
MRS SHEPHERD'S WORK-ROOM
CLEAR-STARCHING IN LOUISIANNA
A BILLIARD TABLE AT NEW ORLEANS
A LOVER'S VENGEANCE
VOLUME THE THIRD
JUNO'S
LAMENT OVER THE LAST OF HER RACE
LUCY BLIGH AND THE CHOCTAWS
EDWARD BLIGH'S FAREWELL TO HIS CONGREGATION
LYNCH LAW
RETRIBUTION
For Harvard University's copy see Google Books:
http://books.google.it/books?id=oTAWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Frances+Trollope+Jonathan+Jefferson+Whitlaw&source=bl&ots=hiFiQ94CLK&sig=x1yV7jeW-W-uRLGiBJC_ybZZYtw&hl=it&ei=MSJ5TeHqGIbIswauyangBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
THE LIFE AND
ADVENTURES OF
JONATHAN
JEFFERSON
WHITLAW
CHAPTER I
t one of
those bold sweeps of the Mississippi river which occasionally
vary the monotony of its scenery by giving a portion of its dark, deep
waters the appearance of a lake, may yet be seen the traces of what was
once - some dozen years ago perhaps - a human habitation. The spot is
fearfully wild, and possesses no single feature of the sweet
heart-cheering beauty which a lover of Nature would select for
the embellishment of his familiar home; yet it is not altogether
without
interest, - that species of interest, at least, which arises from a
vague and shadowy outline, and the absence of every object, either of
grace or of deformity, which might lower by its insignificance the
effect of the moody grandeur that seems to brood over the almost
boundless plain through which the father of waters rolls his mighty
waves.
There is in truth an unbroken vastness in the scenes displayed at many
points of the Mississippi river that seizes very powerfully on the
imagination; and though composed for the most part of objects that
chill and revolt the mind, the combination of them would, I think,
detain the eye for some short space from many a fairer landscape, were
it possible that such could rise beside it.
Unwonted to European eyes, and mystically heavy, is the eternal gloom
that seems settled upon that region. Whatever wind may blow - however
bright and burning that southern sun may blaze in the unclouded sky,
the
stream is for ever turbid, and for ever dark, turning all that is
reflected on its broad breast to its own murky hue, and so blending all
things into one sad, sombre tint, till the very air seems tinged with
gray, and Nature looks as if she had put on a suit of mourning to do
honour to some sad solemnity. Nor can one look long upon the scene
without fancying that Nature has indeed some cause to mourn; for at
one moment an uprooted forest is seen borne along by the rapid flood,
its leafy honours half concealed beneath the untransparent wave, while
its faithless roots mock the air by rearing their unsightly branches in
their stead. At another, the sullen stillness is interrupted
by
a
blast
that
will rend from the earth her verdant mantle
- there her only boast, and leave the groaning forest, crushed,
prostrate, unbarked and unboughed, the very emblem of ruin, desolation
and despair.
It is perhaps this very perfection of melancholy dreariness which
creates the interest experienced on viewing the singular scenery
of
the
Mississippi.
But
though one may feel well disposed to linger for
a moment to gaze on its strange and dismal vastness, it offers little
to tempt a longer stay. The drowsy alligator,
luxuriating on its slimy banks, or the unsocial bear, happy in the
undisputed possession of its tangled thickets, alone seem formed to
find prolonged enjoyment there.
Yet this was the spot selected and chosen, at no very distant period
of the earth's history, as the abode of a man who
nevertheless had all the world before him where to choose; and, what
is perhaps more extraordinary still, he never either regretted his
choice, or felt the slightest inclination to change his habitation for
the space of at least ten years after he made it.
This chosen spot was thenceforward distinguished by the name of Mohana Creek;
an
appellation
borrowed
from
a deep ravine not a hundred yards distant
from it, which during the winter and spring carried a huge stream of
pine-stained water to the river.
It was indeed this valuable creek which attracted the careful and
skilful eye of Jonathan Whitlaw,
and finally led him to select its vicinity for the erection of a
permanent dwelling for himself and his family.
What the original cause might have been which induced Mr Jonathan
Whitlaw to 'squat in the bush' (as the taking possession of any
heretofor unappropriated land is called in Transatlantic phrase), was
never, I believe, very clearly understood; and as the point is not
likely to be one of much interest to the general reader, I will not
delay the progress of my narrative by repeating the various conjectures
on the subject which have reached me: it is sufficient for my purpose
to state, that about three o'clock P.M. on a certain
Tuesday in the
month of April 18--, a very small boat, formed of unpainted deals, with
nothing but a few articles of old household furniture for its cargo,
and two women, one man, and a dog for its crew, came down the stream,
and by the aid of its paddles was brought within grappling-reach of the
bank immediately above Mohana Creek.
Little and light as was her lading, the boat was deep in the water, and
the two women had perched themselves with the feet drawn up on an old
chest, that formed the most substantial part of the cargo, in order to
keep themselves out of the water, which a very considerable leak was
permitting to enter in such abundance as to render the frail craft not
only very uncomfortable, but very unsafe.
'By the living Jingo', cried the man, springing on shore, 'it is time
to be smart, or we shall be going down where nobody ever comes up. Be
spry, gals!' he continued, stretching out his hand to assist the
disembarkation of the females: 'you hold her fast on with the hook,
Portia, till I can grapple her tight to a tree; and you, Clio, look
sharp and fix them notions safe and dry on shore as fast as I can pitch
them at ye'.
The individual who thus, in the true Columbian style, now planted his
foot on the land, and thereby took possession of it, was a powerful
muscular man somewhat past thirty. His features were regular, and might
have been called handsome, had the expression of his countenance been
less unpleasing; but labour and intemperance had each left traces there.
The women who were his companions appeared both of them to be under
twenty, and of the very lowest order of society. Their
garments
were
scanty
and
sordid, and they had much the look and air of
that poorly-paid class known in every manufacturing town in the United
States as 'the gals of the factory'.
Whatever else they might be, however, they seemed to possess one
excellent feminine quality to perfection, - they were most 'obedient to
command'; and though one of them was very evidently in a state which
rendered her little fit for hard work, they both of them readily and
actively performed the task allotted to them, till the boat was
disembarrassed of all the load she had carried, save the water - and
that was visibly increasing upon her rapidly.
'It don't signify thinking of anything else,' observed Mr
Jonathan Whitlaw, 'till I have saved them elegant sawed planks.
Wood is plenty enough, and to spare, no doubt; but sawing is sawing all
the world over, so you must jest wait a spell, gals, till I'm ready to
fix you: and if you will but bide clever a bit, and say not a word till
I bid you, why then I'll set to fix you and all your notions about you
outright, as slick as may be'.
A goodly axe being part of the treasure landed, it required but a few
minutes to demolish the frail vessel, and deposit her timbers on the
bank. This done, Jonathan Whitlaw turned to his wife and his sister,
nothing dismayed, as it should seem, at the apparent impossibility of
leaving the dreary spot on which they stood; and having filled the
hollow of his left cheek with tobacco, and settled himself in his
ill-fitting attire with sundry of those jerks and tugs incomprehensible
to all who have not looked at the natives of the New World face to
face, he thus addressed them:
'Well, now, this is what I call a right-down elegant location. D'ye
comprehend the privilege of that handsome creek, gals? Maybe you don't,
and maybe I do. Mind now what I say: if that creek don't prove as good
as a dozen axes, say my name's not Jonathan',
'My!' - exclaimed the matronly Portia, drawing her thin shawl more
tightly round her; for the April sun, though it had almost scorched
them on the river, could not prevent the deep, dank shade of the spot
from sending a cold shiver through her limbs. 'Well, now, Jonathan, but
that will be considerable convenient anyhow'.
'I expect so,' replied the man, folding his arms, and turning himself
slowly round to every point of the compass to ascertain the
capabilities of the spot for the 'improvements' he meditated, 'I expect
so', he repeated with an absent air, as if his faculties were wholly
absorbed by the examination he was making.
To an unpracticed eye, a single glance might have seemed sufficient to
discover everything that the desolate spot had to show. Before them
spread the mighty mass of muddy waters, bounded, as it seemed, on all
sides by the matted foliage of the level forest, above whose unvaried
line sprang the high arch of heaven. Beneath their feet was a boggish,
peat-like soil, that looked as if occasionally it might itself become a
part of the swollen river's bed. Around them rose innumerable tall,
slender trees, between whose stems the eye could not penetrate two
hundred yards in any direction, so thickly was the ground covered with
an undergrowth of bear-brake and reeds.
To an unpracticed eye, one glance would have been enough, and too
much, to show all that could there be seen; unless the next might
have discovered a friendly bark upon that muddy stream, which might
have borne the gazer from it for ever.
But with Jonathan Whitlaw the case was very different. Not a
stem, not a stick, not a reed, not a hollow half filled withh stagnant
water, nor a crevice that might facilitiate its escape, but was
examined with as much earnest attention, and reasoned upon with
as much provident wisdom as might suffice to decide the locality of a
palace.
The women meanwhile again seated themselves on the chest which had done
them such good service in the boat, and for a time sat silently
watching the master of their destiny as he mediated in the secret
council-chamber of his own breast the plans on which it hung. A low
whispering then commenced between them, the result of which was a
half-timid, half-coaxing attempt on the part of Clio, the bolder
spirited of the two, to draw his attention from the future to the
present.
'I say, Bub', she began, 'I say, - do you know that Porchy and I are
right
down dead almost for summet to eat? I can get at the bag with the
corn-cakes in no time. Shall I, Jonathan?'
Jonathan turned his quid of tobacco deliberately from one cheek to the
other, and then replied,
'I'll tell you what it is, sis, - we are here - no matter why, -
Perhaps 'tis because I happen to like this here part of the country
best - but at any rate here we be, and I can tell you that here we must
bide - but as to spending our days in nothing but eating, it's
what I'm not provided for. Now look you, both of you, and
I'll tell you the case at once. The nearest town to this here bit is
Natchez, and I calculate that is not over nigh for a walk
through the bush, seeing it can't be less than twenty miles right
a-head. I won't say that we can't buy a bushel of corn-meal no nigher,
but I won't say that we can; but this I will say, that near or far, we
shan't never get it at all without having the Spanish wheels ready, I
expect; and concerning that commodity I'll tell you no lies, - I have
got no more of it than a mouse might carry easy at full trot. But,
however, there stands the meal-tub chock full, and dry as a ripe
tassel, - I took care of that. And here's five gallons of whiskey, and
there's my axe, and here's my arms', baring them as he spoke to the
shoulder. 'So be good gals, and I'll fix a palace for you; but don't be
for everlasting talking of eating, jest in the beginning, - I shall be
wrathy enough if you do, I tell you that: so mind and say no more
about it, but each of you take a drop with me, and you'll be after
helping me build in no time'.
With a celerity which showed the effect of habit, Jonathan Whitlaw
produced a horn from his pocket, and skilfully appying it to the little
cask, drew forth what he considered as a fitting portion for each, and
presented it in succession to the two females. This generous and
gallant office performed, he swallowed a treble dose himself, and
instantly set to work.
His prophecy was speedily fulfilled - the poisonous inspiration did
its work, and under its feverish influence the young women dragged and
pulled, and pushed and carried, according to his orders, with a degree
of strength and perseverance greatly beyond what their age and
appearance promised.
The increase of vigour which he had himself acquired from the draught
showed itself not only in the activity with which he laboured, but by a
more than ordinary degree of loquacity - a part of which may serve to
explain his future plans.
'This here tree must down smack - and them there three small ones into
the bargain; then this one, and that one, and they two t'others, shall
have their heads and branches cut off slick; and there's the four
corners of the house as clean as a whistle, and we must roll up the
logs around them. I say, gals, don't I know the river? I expect this
will prove the most profitable privilege of a wooding-station of any
'twixt New Orlines and Cincinnati. What with that there elegant creek,
and this here handsome elevation' (the spot selected for his house was
at this time at least six or seven inches above the level of the
river); 'and what with them there capital hickories, and this dreadful
beautiful sweep in of the river, that will bring the steamers up to me
whether they will or no; - I say, gals, that if things do but go on at
New Orlines as bravely as they do now, I'll make dollars enough, by
wooding their boats for 'em, to open a store for all the notions
in creation at Natchez, before ten years are out. Why, since we've
landed I've see half a dozen first-rate timbers shoot the creek; and
I'll soon see if I can't find a way to stop 'em short, as soon as I've
got a pair of hands to spare'.
While his tongue was thus active, however, the hands he talked of were
by no means idle. The rapidity and apparent ease with which trees were
felled, and the allotted space cleared, might have been mistaken for an
effort of more than mortal skill by any but a back-woosdman. What was
to Jonathan Whitelaw the work of one stroke of the axe, would to any
unused to the mystery have required a dozen; and where the unskilled
would have raised the instrument on high, and brought its edge
and weight to bear with a violent exertion of strength, he achieved
the object with an easy dexterity, which seemed not to require one half
the power that the brawny arm which wielded the axe could well have
bestowed had it been needed.
Notwithstanding all that skill and perseverance could do, however, the
sturdy woodsman and his tottering assistants were overtaken by
darkness ere they had completed such a shelter as might permit them to
sleep securely on the spot they had chosen.
A shed on the banks of the Mississippi, twenty miles above Natchez, may
now perhaps be considered as tolerably secure, except from the
occasional visits of an exploring bear, or the rambling propensities
of an hungry alligator: but in the year 18-- it was much less so; and
as
the leaden gloom of the short twilight settled upon the woods, the bold
squatter was fain to suspend his labour, with no better comfort for his
weary companions than a confession that, after all, they should not be
able to get a spell of sleep except turn and turn about, because they
might be waked by the varment, with half a leg eaten off, before they
had done dreaming.
'I expect I must die then, Jonathan', said the poor young wife, in a
voice so feeble as somewhat to alarm her companions, - 'I expect I must
die before morning'.
'You a back-woodman's lady, Porchy', said her husband, approaching her,
'and talk of dying the first night that you gets to the bush! Come
come, gal, no faints, or my dander will be up pretty considerable.
Here, Cli, shake down the straw bed upon that there lot of boughs, and
give her that sack of notions for her head, and she will be fast and
snoring in no time; and then you and I will be after kindling an
elegant blaze to scare them devils the varmint - bears, painters,
wolves, alligators, and all'.
Poor Clio promptly set about performing this new task, and with much
tenderness assisted the over-worn young wife to lay herself as much at
her ease as her rude couch might permit: but while thus engaged,
another
whisper was exchanged between the sisters, which produced exactly the
same petition as the former one, some five or six hours before.
'But I say, Bub,- I expect Porchy will never sleep a wink unless you
give her a morsel to eat first'.
'One word for Porchy, and two for yourself, eh, Cli?' Howsomever, you
have been considerable good gals both of ye; so you shan't ax for
nothing, this time'.
If the hungry Clio was alert before, she now became doubly so, as she
sought and found the bag containing the treasured corn-cakes.
'Well now! - wouldn't a herring grilled over a handful of stikcs be
first-rate?' said the poor girl coaxingly, and holding up the tempting
morsel she had found, before the eyes of her brother.
'Why, I can't say but what I expect it would be eatable', replied the
autocrat, producing flint and steel; 'so pick up your sticks, Cli, and
set about it'.
With zealous activity, the now happy Clio prepared to obey the welcome
mandate, and showed almost as much skill and dexterity in selecting and
kindling the boughs which lay scattered round her, as her brother had
done in strewing them.
In a few minutes a thick column of smoke rose through the still air,
the faggots crackled, and the herring, as it hung suspended over the
flame from the ingenious machine erected for it, sent forth an odour so
powerful and enticing, that when it reached the nostrils of the
half-famished Portia, she rose with renovated strength, and approached
the manifold comforts of the blazing fire, The three weary and hungry
wanderers then sat down around it, and devoured their repast with as
great a degree of enjoyment as it is possible for the act of eating to
bestow; and even the dog, though in general expected to provide his own
meals, was not forgotten. To complete the luxury of the banquet,
Jonathan dipped their one precious iron crock into the muddied but
sweetest of streams, and having boiled it, permitted the ladies, in
compliance with the delicacy of their ordinary habits, to mix it, in
the proportion of half and half, with the one and only liquid which he
deemed worthy to enter the lips of a free-born man. In his own case,
therefore, he suffered not the vital stream from his beloved whisky-keg
to be contaminated by the admixture of any alloying Mississippi
whatever; and the portion he permitted himself to swallow was, as he
said, in just proportion to the work he had done.
The repast ended, the weary Portia once more stretched herself upon her
welcome bed of straw; while her companions were employed, first, in
removing the thickly-scattered branches from the immediate
neighbourhood of the fire, to guard against that most fatal of forest
disasters, a conflagration amongst thick underwood, where there is no
outlet for escape; and then in
collecting together, at
safe distance, such a quantity of them as might supply their watch-fire
during the night. This done, the
residue of the corn-cakes carefully tied up and slung upon a bough, and
the invaluable crock as scrupulouslyt attended to as if it had been a
silver casserole, the gracious Jonathan told his yawning sister that
she too might lay herself down beside his sleeping wife; adding, that
when daylight came, he would wake them both, and turn in to take a
spell himself.
In less than five minutes Clio was as deeply asleep as her friend
Portia; and Jonathan, seated on the hearth with his dog beside him, and
supporting his back against a tree, prepared to endure his weary watch,
which the low long howl of wolves in the distance already showed to be
no unnecessary precaution; and so strong is the instinct of
self-preservation, that the united influence of labour and whisky
failed to overpower the feeling which kept the aching eyes of the
wanderer open through the long hours of that painful night.
However miserable beyond endurance the fatigues and privations above
described may appear to the European reader, they form no exaggerated
picture of that tremendous enterprise, the first 'settling in the bush'
on the Mississippi, at the period at which my tale commences. The
undertaking is even now one both of danger and difficulty; though both
are now greatly lessened by the comparatively near neighbourhood that
the
new settler is likely to find, let him place himself at what point of
the river he may, below its junction with the Ohio. Whenever a new
settler arrives it is now the custom for about a dozen of the
nearest residents to assemble at the spot he has chosen, for the
purpose of assisting him to rear his log-hut; the only payment expected
for this timely service being a 'pretty considerable' allowance of
whisky, to be socially swallowed before the party separates: so that it
generally happens that the first sleep taken by the stranger in his new
abode is long and sound, though perhaps not particularly refreshing.
Such is the custom of the present time; but two or three-and-twenty
years ago, the stout-hearted pioneer of population on the distant and
unhealthy banks of this singular river must have perished for want of a
shelter if incapable of providing one for himself.
The laborious but very profitable employment of supplying the
innumerable steamboats with fire-wood, which now bribes so many to
brave ague and privation of all kinds, was then in the hands of very
few; and none who ventured to embrace it could hope to do so without
encountering at least as much of danger and difficulty as Jonathan
Whitlaw.
CHAPTER II
t is not my
intention to enter upon a lengthened detail of the 'get
along' process of Jonathan Whitlaw in his new abode: the events I wish
to dwell upon are of more recent date. It will therefore be sufficient
for my purpose to state, that a spirit of industry which even
intemperance could not conquer, enabled him to raise, unaided by any
hands but those of his female companions, such a shelter as appeared
completely to satisfy the wishes of those for whose use it was
constructed. What praise could the most skilful architect desire more?
Nor were their daily necessities less fully answered: Clio had often
the supreme enjoyment of banqueting on a grilled herring; Portia had
never yet seen the bottom of her meal-tub; and Jonathan's shanty soon
came to be so well known to the flat-boat traders going down, and the
steam-boat traders going up the river, that there was no need of his
taking a journey to Natchez to ensure the replenishing of his
whisky-cask.
He had, in truth, chosen his location well. With a species of skill and
exertion peculiar to himself and his class, he contrived to abstract
from his elegant Mohana Creek so many uprooted trees, that till the dry
summer months stopped the supply, he had rarely occasion to fell one
for the construction of the well-packed piles of wood, which it was the
especial province of the strong-armed Clio to arrange upon the
river's bank. To use his own language, 'Natur was in partnership-like
with him,' and being a partner that never slept, he not unfrequently
found leisure himself to take a spell in the bush with his rifle, an
instrument which he used as skilfully as the axe. The result of this
agreeable variety of occupation was, that Clio was almost as often
employed to roast a turkey, as to grill a herring; and the table
constructed of the timbers of his flat boat not unfrequently smoked
with a service of game which an European board might have been proud to
boast.
Meanwhile that hour, important alike in the palace or the hut - at
least to the individual most concerned in it - overtook poor Portia;
and on returning one evening from a 'gunning frolic' in the forest Mr
Jonathan Whitlaw was greeted with the intelligence that he was the
father of a thriving boy.
Clio, whose genius for usefulness seemed universal, performed the
duties of a nurse both to mother and child as successfully as if she
had studied the profession at the Hospice
de
la
Maternité at Paris; and when she presented the
new-born babe to her brother, she felt as much pride in the office as
if conscious that she held in her arms a latent President.
Birth of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw
Jonathan, too, though not
particularly susceptible of the tenderer
feelings of our nature, looked on the boy with considerable
satisfaction.
'That's jam, gal,' said he, addressing his wife. 'Boys be the right
sort
for the bush, mind that. Not but what Cli is up to a thing or two, too.
But boys is most profitable, that's a fact. I calculate now that this
younker will be fit to turn a dollar one way or another by the time ten
years is gone done; and if we can keep him from starting for five more
-'
But here our hero gave so prodigious a squall, that Clio started off
with him to his mother, and the remainder of the predicition was left
unspoken.
However favourable it might have been, however, the years which
followed gave the provident father no cause to think his first
impression respecting his heir were in any degree too favourable.
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, for so was the young back-woodsman named,
testified innumerable qualities that might have justified the hopes of
the most sanguine father in America. Spite of occasional 'shaking' he
was stout in limb; and considering the rather restricted nature of his
position as compared to society at large, his knowledge and
intelligence increased with surprising rapidity.
Never certainly did any child, even among the most precocious wonders
of the European world, display a more eager desire of profiting by
every opportunity of acquiring information and experience than the
young Jonathan Jefferson. No steam-boat ever approached his father's
station from the time he completed his third year, without finding him
standing at the very extremity of the log platform that projected from
the bank for the convenience of the engine-men who took their fuel
there, and happy was Jonathan Jefferson when it chanced, which was not
unfrequently, that his keen black eyes and curly head tempted some
good-humoured idler to give him a hand, that he might spring on board
and gaze upon the wonders to be seen within her. These favours were
requited by so knowing and fearless a nod on the part of the
young explorer, that the first playful act was often followed by very
active patronage as long as the operation of 'wooding' lasted;
and the bold boy generally returned to his sickly mother, or his much
better loved aunt Cli, with nearly all his scanty garments held up in a
most firm and careful grasp, lest the biscuits, raisins, apples, and
cents bestowed on him by the passengers should escape.
At the age of five, if any old acquaintance held out the accustomed
hand to aid his boarding, it was thrust aside by a saucy action of the
little sturdy elbow, and Jonathan Jefferson was on the deck, in the
cabin, beside the engine, or in the inmost recesses of the
steward's pantry, before any one knew where he came from.
It will be readily supposed that a man like Jonathan Whitlaw did not
suffer the abilities of such a boy as this to remain idle. He was early
given to understand that all he ate, he must earn; and as he soon
manifested a family affinity to his good aunt in his love of a savoury
morsel, the prudent father failed not to turn this discriminating
palate to advantage, selling every shot of his own rifle for a due
proportion of labour performed in building up the cords of wood, or in
exploring the creek, by his active boy.
Not only one, but many dollars had the child earned or turned in some
way or other, before the ten years named in his father's prediction had
elapsed. Nor had the the stalwart woodman gone half as far in his
daring hopes for the future, formed for himself when first he stood
houseless and hungry on the swampy bank which he had selected, as the
result justified. No wood was so well cut and so well 'sawed' as
Whitlaw's: no woodsman was so ready in counting, so quick in settling,
and so every way convenient for men in a hurry to deal with, as this
our fortune-favoured squatter. Ague and fever seemed to keep clear of
him lest they should be baffled in the strife, and turning from his
close-knit iron frame, poured all their vengeance on his poor shrinking
wife. But Clio, whose constitution bore a close resemblance to his
own, still continued his zealous and most efficient fellow-labourer.
After 'shaking a spell' during the autumn of the first year or two, she
too defied the foul fiend that haunts the western world in the shape of
ague, and thenceforward appeared to suffer no more from the climate
than the wolves and the bears, which the busy noises of their active
establishment had driven back into the woods.
At the end of the third year, a cow, whose coat seemed to indicate some
affinity to her neighbouring bears, was added to the 'plenishing of the
lot'; and the omnipotent Clio contrived to sell the best milk on the
river to all the yellow-tinted or woolly-headed stewards, whose
interest it is to make the breakfasts, dinners and suppers on board the
steam-boats atone by their excellence for the tedious hours between.
Good store of hogs, which grubbed most delicate fattening in the
forest, contributed not a little to the family fund of wealth and good
living; and lastly, an additional room was added to the shanty, over
the door of which directly fronting the river, was inscribed with red
paint in letters of a foot high -
WHITLAW'S WHISKY STORE.
The cents, fips, picciunes, bits, levys, quarters, halves, and dollars,
which in the course of four years' - were left within this shed, very
greatly exceeded the most sanguine calculations of Whitlaw; and as
'Prime Bacon' - 'Capital Chewing Tobacco'
-
'First-rate
Domestic'
and
'Fine Meal', were successively added
to the announcements, the store soon became the resort of every
squatter within ten miles, as well as the favourite stopping-place of
all the craft on the river.
The son and heir of this prosperous settler had just completed his
tenth year, when an accident occurred to him, the consequences of which
entirely changed the position and circumstances of his family.
Early in the month of August 18--, one of the noblest and largest
steam-boats ever launched on the Mississippi was seen to bend
gracefully round the projecting swell of the bank below Mohana Creek,
and approach the landing-place in front of the store.
Young Whitlaw was occupied, at the moment she came in sight, in poking
a long pole into a hole in the bank, in which he fancied he should find
some 'crocodile's eggs'. Struck
by her splendid appearance, he left his employment, and placing himself
at his accustomed post on the edge of the platform, impatiently awaited
her arrival.
Before the steam had been let off, or the paddles ceased to play, the
impatient boy decided to spring on board, and trusting to his pole,
which he fixed, as he thought, firmly on the platform, he attempted to
swing himself into the vessel - a distance of at least twelve feet. So
active and well practised were his young limbs, that it is probable he
would have succeeded, had not the slippery log on which he had placed
his pole permitted it to give way at the very moment its firmness was
most essential to his safety, and the instant it sank from his hand the
adventurous child fell headlong into the water.
Above two hundred persons saw the accident; and the boy's greatest
danger now arose from the variety and eagerness of the measures put in
practice to save him. But it appeared that the little fellow never lost
his presence of mind for a moment, for, without paying the slightest
attention to the contradictory cries of 'Hold fast to this rope' from
one
quarter, and 'Catch by this tub' from another, the bold boy, who swam
like an otter, deliberately turned from the dangerous projection of the
gallery, and marking the moment when the open gangway approached,
sprang upwards, seized its railing, and in an instant stood unharmed on
board the boat.
That awful peculiarity of the Mississippi river, which causes it to
bear away whatever sinks beneath its surface beyond the reach and power
of the most skilful search that would recover it, is so well known to
every inhabitant of the region, that the sight of a human being falling
into its fatal wave creates a much stronger sensation than any similar
accident would do elsewhere. Young Whitlaw, therefore, was instantly
surrounded by a crowd of anxious and friendly faces.
'A pretty considerable escape you've had, my boy', exclaimed one.
'Your fate is not drowning, at any rate, you young devil', cried
another.
'A famous swimmer you are, and that's a fact, boy,' observed a third.
'And a bold heart as ever I see', observed a fourth.
'Are you not wet to the skin, my poor fellow?' inquired a kind-hearted
gentleman, shuddering sympathetically.
'And what does it signify if I be', replied the boy with an accent
which implied more scorn than gratitude. 'But I say', he continued,
fixing his eyes on a very handsome rifle which the compassionate
gentleman held in his hand, 'what will you sell that there rifle for?'
The offended philanthropist turned away, muttering, 'Impudent young
varment!' or some such phrase, while a chorus of laughter from those
around testified the general feeling of admiration excited by the
dauntless spirits of the saucy boy.
There was one spectator, however, who, though by no means less
observant than the rest, had hitherto only looked on in silence. He
remarked that the boy followed the rifle with his eyes as the indignant
bearer of it walked away; and wisely judging that it was Jonathan
Jefferson's innate love of barter which had dictated the question, and
no idle ebullition of impertiinence, as the mistaken laughers imagined,
he determined to find out who it was, who at so early an age evinced
such undaunted courage, a wit so ready at command, and a disposition
for bargain-making which, even at a moment so agitating, did not
forsake him.
The observant and judicious stranger continued to keep his eye fixed on
the boy, but did not address him till the crowd which had witnessed his
escape was dispersed, and then, laying a hand gently on his shoulder,
he
said - 'What is your name, my fine fellow?'
'Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw', replied the boy civilly: for he looked up
into the inquirer's face as he addressed him, and a something, which,
if it be not instinct, it would be difficult to name, whispered to him
that he was rich.
'Jonathan Jefferson?' replied the stranger; 'a good name that, boy, -
an exceedingly good name: I expect your father's no fool. Who is your
father, my good lad? Where do you come from?'
'My father is a first-rate capital back woodsman, and we keep a store;
and that's Aunt Cli milking our own cow for the steward, and I sell all
the skins I can snare, and I've got an axe of my own'.
'Can you read, my boy?
'No.' responded Jonathan Jefferson in an accent somewhat humbled.
'Will you work for me, and do all that I bid you, if I take you home
with me and have you taught to read?'
The cautious child did not immediately reply - and at this moment the
bell was rung which gave the signal for departure.
'Off with you, my lad', cried the steward as he stepped on board with
his jug of milk, 'or we shall run away with you'.
The boy's eyes were still fixed on the face of the person who had
addressed him, as he stepped towards the edge of the boat preparatory
to springing on shore, but the important question was still left
unanswered.
'I shall stop here again, perhaps, coming down,' said the stranger,
nodding to him; 'and I will come on shore and see you again, and then
you shall answer me'.
When the labours of that eventful day were ended, and the family were
assembled round the evening meal, young Whitlaw, after a silence of
several minutes, said abruptly, 'Father! - why can't I read?'
The question seemed a puzzling one; for the person to whom it was
addressed repeated the words twice over before he attempted to answer
it.
'Why can't you read, boy? - why can't you read? Well, now, if that
don't beat all natur! When did ever a body hear such a question from a
brat of a chicken, and he but ten years old this very month?'
As this speech seemed to be addressed, like most of Mr Whitlaw's
speeches, to his sister Clio, it was his sister Clio who answered it.
'Well now, Bub, I'll tell you a piece of my mind: you'll find no good
reason, if you look from Georgia to Maine, why this 'ere smart chap of
our's shouldn't be President - and so I say too, why don't the boy be
learnt to read?'
'The vixen's mad, as sure as the moon's in heaven!' exclaimed the
master of the dwelling with much vehemence; yet something in his eye
and his voice taught those whose interest it was to understand his
humour, that he was neither displeased nor indifferent.
'What put that into your head, boy', said he, turning short round
towards his son, and rousing him from a reverie into which he seemed to
have fallen, by raising the toe of his hob-nailed shoe so as gently to
touch the boy's chin - 'What put reading into your head?'
'That don''t much matter, I expect', replied the young republican;
'but I've got it into my head somehow, I can tell you that - and I
guess that if I can't be learned here, I'll run away to where I can'.
Clio looked at her brother's face with some anxiety, not feeling quite
sure whether her darling might not this time get a kick in good
earnest; but she saw there was nothing to fear.
'You're a chip of the old block, I calculate, my fine one', said the
proud father, eyeing the boy from top to toe; 'but I shall play another
sort of game with you, from what my father was often playing with me -
I'll make a gentleman off-hand of thee, boy - so no need to run'.
'Father, I must begin reading to-morrow'.
'Well, now, Jonathan', said the father, laughing, 'my notion is that
you had best wait a spell for it. Next month I shall go down to Natchez
for goods; and if you'll behave yourself, and not badger me about it,
I'll take you with me, and maybe leave you at some real right-down
college for a few quarters'.
'My --!' exclaimed the neglected Portia, whose opinion was seldom asked
on any subject, 'you won't leave him that far away, Jonathan, will you?'
'Your boy'll never be in Congress, Porchy, if he can't read', said Clio
kindly: 'so don't you put a spoke in his wheel, anyhow. But, Bub', she
continued, 'why for should we all bide here, if he be to take his
learning at Natchez? You and I know, don't we, that you may open a
store any day in a grander place than this? And I mind, when first we
put foot at Mohana Creek, that you said, "That very creek shall make
dollars enough in ten years to open store at Natchez:" and isn't it ten
years? and arn't the dollars made? and wouldn't it be an elegant sight
to see us all set off in a steamer? and couldn't you sell the good-will
for silver?'
These pithy questions followed each other with such rapidity - for the
eloquence of Clio seemed to warm as she proceeded - that it was not
very surprising that she received no answer to them. It was not,
however, a knavish speech that slept in a foolish ear; for it suggested
many thoughts which, working with those already awakened by young
Jonathan's wilfulness, produced the results that will hereafter be seen.
For the present, however, all further discussion of the subject was
suspended; for the voice which had hitherto been absolute beneath that
roof pronounced -
'Now let us all go to bed'.
And not another syllable was uttered by any of them that night.
CHAPTER III
oung as
Jonathan Jefferson was at this time, he understood his
father's ways and humours, and how to manage them too, better than many
highly-educated youths of twice his age, who, having passed all their
vacations under the paternal roof, have only arrived at the conclusion
that their father was - their father, without troubling themselves to
attribute to him any other characteristics whatever. Far different was
the case with young Whitlaw. If he wanted a few cents with which to
chaffer for some coveted article on board the next steam-boat, he
watched his moment for asking for them as carefully and as skilfullly
as a hawk for the instant of seizing her prey. Jonathan Jefferson
already loved a quid, yet he would suffer days and days to elapse
without ever asking the paternal hand to share the luxury with him; but
Jonathan Jefferson was seldom or never without a store of
prime chewing tobacco in the pocket of his jacket, given him cheerfully
and willingly by his careful father.
It was this principle of 'watching his time' which sent the ambitious
youth so silently and obediently to bed, in the manner recorded in the
last chapter. His young mind was, however, stiffly decided upon
leaving Mohana Creek one way or another before the winter set in, as
Napoleon's was upon marrying an Austrian archduchess. As he laid his
head on his bag of Turkey feathers, he determined not to go to sleep
till he had thought a great deal about the stranger, and about Natchez,
and about being a great man. But here the universal law of nature
captured the force of incipient character; and no sooner had he decided
what to think of, than Jonathan Jefferson dropped asleep.
With the earliest light, however, he was beyond the reach of any human
eye, seated at the foot of a maple-tree, where the prickly pear was
not. The spot had no other advantage, except indeed that it was so shut
in by brambles, that even Aunt Cli had never discovered the retreat,
though it was one to which he constantly resorted when it was his wish
and will to be idle and alone. Another boy might have chosen one of the
many nooks within his reach which the wild vine embellished with its
graceful and fragrant festoons; but little Jonathan Jefferson had 'no
such stuff in his thoughts;' he wanted a place where he could sit easy,
count his levys and picciunes wiithout being looked at, and be very
sure that nobody could find him out till he chose to let them.
Here then he sat down to meditate on the new hopes that had
broken in upon him.
Had not the boy spent so many brilliant half-hours on board the
steam-boats, his native shed and the dark world around it would not
thus early have appeared so contemptible in his aspiring eyes; but as
it was, he never left the silk curtains, gilt mouldings, gay sofas, and
handsome mirrors of the cabins behind him, without wishing that he
might live among them for ever, and never, never more behold the dirty
dismal 'get along' style of living to which he seemed destined.
The words of the well-dressed, rich-looking stranger resounded in his
ears --
'Will you work for me, if I take you home with me, and have you taught
to read?'
'Work for him?' soliloquised the boy. 'He can't give me harder work
than
father; and when I'm learning to read, I can't be working, anyhow. -
Go home with him? Why, his home must be as fine as a steam-boat,
to
look
at
his
beautiful hat and white shirt, and shiny boots. I'd run
away and go home with him to-morrow, if it wasn't for leaving Aunt Cli,
and
having no one, maybe, to give me all the nice bits at a sly time, and
to praise me up everlasting for all I do'.
The idea of his aunt led his thoughts to another direction.
'There's no need for me to run away to anybody, if father would give me
all his money, as he ought to do. They fancy I know nothing about it;
as if, because I was abed, and mother snoring t'other side, I must be
asleep too. But I can lie still and peep a spell; and I've seen father
and aunt haul out as many dollars upon the table as would buy me a
house as fine as a cabin, and leave a lot to count over when I went to
bed besides. - If I could but get at them dollars - '
Such, had his thoughts been spoken, would have been the language of the
urchin as he sat scarifying the soft moss beside him with a twig that
had dropped on it from the maple-tree. And then his mind wandered back
again from his father, Aunt Cli, and their hoarded treasure, to the
stranger, of whose offers and promises he had spoken to no one.
'And they need know nothing about it', was the well-weighed judgment
to which he came at last. 'We'll see what father means about Natchez;
but if I tell him about the gentleman first, maybe he'll do nothing at
all'.
Once arrived at this conclusion, and steadfastly determined to abide by
it, young Jonathan started to his feet, slipped as cautiously as an
Indian through the bushes that enclosed his retreat, and walked home to
eat his breakfast, and tell his father that he had set a first-rate
snare, which he was sure would trap a possum afore night.
'Arn't he a smart boy, Porchy?' said Clio, who wanted to attack
her brother again, without directly addressing him. 'Ten
years old last Wednesday was a week, and hunting and snaring, and
swimming and fending, as if he was twenty! Now won't it be a burning
shame if he bean't taught to read?'
'Wait a spell, gal,' said her brother somewhat sternly, 'and you
shall see what metal I'm made of, if you don't altogether know already.
But don't bother me, or my dander will be up, I tell you, and I'll be
as wrathy as an affronted alligator; and then you'll wish you'd stayed
longer a-draining the drippings from Sue-cherry, maybe.'
Clio did know something of his metal, and secretly determined never to
allude again to the literary deficiencies of her nephew till
the subject was started by the imperious back-woodsman himself. This
truly wise resolution, so well deserving the attention of my female
readers, was founded especially upon two points of his character
with which she was well acquainted: namely, that Jonathan Whitlaw never
abandoned a notion he had once taken into his head, till he had
tried, and found it wanting either in feasibility or profit; and that
he never promised to be in a passion without keeping his word.
It is probable that Jonathan the younger had come to something like
the same conclusions; for that day passed away, and the morrow, and the
day after it, without one word being uttered by either of them about
Natchez, or the art of reading. The sickly, silly, lazy, languid
Portia,
never troubled herself to ask for more informatiion on any subject than
was proffered to her; and being on the whole pretty effectually guarded
from the imperious temper of her republican husband by the ready
good-nature and adroitness of his sister, she continued to 'get along'
as peaceably as ague, fever, and dyspepsia would let her. Poor Porchy,
therefore, was not likely to break through the very diplomatic silence
preserved by the other members of the household; and thus the subject
which wholly occupied the minds of three out of the four of the party
appeared to be utterly forgotten by all.
Meanwhile other boats passed by both up and down the river, and
Jonathan Jefferson's visits were continued, though in somewhat a less
animated manner; for now his father generally accompanied him, and the
boy felt or fancied that he was watched by him as he proceeded in his
customary pursuit of forage and adventure. On one occasion, indeed, he
was utterly discomfited; for Jonathan senior having entered into
conversation with a passenger going down the river, he in his turn
fancied he had a domestic spy near him, and, turning sharply round,
commanded Jonathan junior to clear off, and assist his aunt in
measuring the wood for the engine-men.
To a command uttered in such a tone the boy well knew that prompt
obedience must be shown, and accordingly he did obey; but in his secret
soul he determined to give up whatever hopes of wealth and dignity the
vision of 'a store at Natchez' had generated in his fancy, and watching
patiently for the return of the stranger, to elude his father's
vigilance, put himself under the rich man's protection, and turn his
back upon tyranny and Mohana Creek for ever.
The precocious lad had had quite enough energy of character and
decision of purpose to have executed this mental threat; and it was
fortunate for the subsequent prosperity of the family that Mr Jonathan
Whitlaw had decided upon his plans before his son and heir found the
opportunity of carrying into execution his own.
The day following his dismissal from the steam-boat, young Jonathan was
startled by the unusual sound of a horse's feet advancing by the narrow
path which the reputation of the store had of late years cleared
through the forest. Only twice before had such a phenomenon appeared at
Mohana Creek, and most eager was the haste and curiosity with which the
whole came forth to greet it.
Clio and the boy both instantly perceived that the guest whose approach
was made in so unwonted a manner, was expected by Whitlaw; but their
curiosity was excited only to be baffled; no sooner had the man
alighted, and fastened his beast to a tree, than that voice whose
breath
was the law of the Creek pronounced its mandates thus: -
'Cli! be smart - hand me the whisky demi-john and two cups - and then
clear yourself off to your suds. Porchy! be after looking up the hogs,
and drive 'em home. And you, Sir Peeper', he added, turning to the boy,
who had ensconced himself very snugly behind the meal-tub, 'you take
yourself to the bush, or the devil, or where you will, - only take care
I don't find your ears within reach of my fist'.
The next moment saw the back-woodsman and his guest téte-à-téte,
and each with a cup of whisky before him. The conference lasted nearly
an hour, and appeared to have been amicable and satisfactory; for when
they walked forth together from the shanty, the banished family, who
were sitting together at very discreet distance upon one of the cords
of wood, observed that the aspect and manner of both were cheerful and
well satisfied; and as Whitlaw civilly held the stirrup of his guest as
he mounted, they heard him say in his gentlest accents.
'Well, Major, next Wednesday then - '
'Next Wednesday then?' what a world of conjecture was created by these
three words!
'Come along in', said Whitlaw to his family, as he turned from the
farewell nod of his visitor and re-entered the shanty.
Jonathan junior looked into the face of Clio. She answered the appeal
by giving him a wink, and laying her finger on her lips, to enforce
his silence; this being, as she well knew, the only chance of their
learning what was going forward from the free-born citizen. The boy
understood her, and nodded in return.
'Well, now!' said the blue-lipped Porchy, who was trembling in every
limb, not from cold indeed, but from the demon ague - 'well, now! I
thought he meant to bide for ever. Clio, do give me a drop of
something warm'.
They all entered the hut together, and Clio was not sorry to have
something with which to make herself busy, that she might not even look
as if she were curious; so that it was with even more than her usual
alacrity that she prepared hot toddy to comfort her shaking
sister-in-law.
But the hour was come, and Whitlaw was now as impatient to be heard as
he had previously been at the idea of being questioned.
'What in the devil's name are you niggling about there, Cli?' he
exclaimed, as he testily watched her operations near the fire. 'I guess
I want to be listened to a spell, and not have you fiddling up the
chimney in that fashion'.
'I'll only give this hot drop to poor Porchy, Bub. who's shaking like a
rag in a hurricane; and then I'll sit down and listen to you, jam'.
'What the devil do you cook water to give her for? If she shakes give
her a real drop at once, and that will give her a chance if anything
will'.
'I take it neat!' exclaimed the poor woman with unaffected distaste.
'Oh, Jonathan! what would become of my poor head if I took it neat
every time I began shaking?'
'I don't think your head would be a bit the worser, woman. Howsomever,
you have got it now after your own fancy; so be still. And you, Cli,
sit down for a minute, without jumping up again, if you can, and I'll
give you a notion of me. You need not be after hiding yourself, J.J.;
for I'm minded that you shall hear me too this time, and no sly work
either'.
Had not the boy known that this epiteth of J.J. was a signal of
especial good-humour, he might have felt somewhat uneasy at this
palpable allusion to one of his peculiarities, of which he was himself
thoroughly aware; but he saw that at present at least he had nothing to
fear, and accordingly sat down as near to his aunt as might be, with
the very agreeable expectation of having a curiosity gratified which
really for the last hour had almost kept him on the rack.
Well, now, I expect you have all of you forgot every word I said
about college, and Natchez, and learning and all that?' began the
consequential orator. 'It is really surprising what shortsighted
creatures Godamighty has seen fit to make women! As for this young
chap, I'd bet a keg to a quid, that he's been thinking of nothing else,
from that day to this, if he'd dared; but I calculate he knows
pretty considerable well that 'tis safest not to let his notions
progress, when I bids 'em to stand still. So I find no fault on that
score. But now, listen to me a spell, as I bid you, and you'll be able
to comprehend a little what sort of man you have got for your
head.'
Ha paused for a moment, and looked in the anxious faces before him; and
a smile of indescribable self-admiration wrinkled his tough skin.
'I expect you don't any of ye exactly guess what for that chap was here
but now? - I calculate that there is not one of the whole kit that
comprehends that I have sold my improvements, store, pig-sty, and all,
for - no matter how much, Jonathan junior, I shan't name that,
or all you look so sharp. It is enough for you to know, one and all,
that the dollars is to be told out next Wednesday, and that the day
after I shall take a spell aboard the first steamer as passes down, to
look at an elegant store that I knows of seven miles this side Natchez,
not on the river neither, but on a pretty lot, well improved, without a
tree to be seen on it, and no more in the bush than New Orlines: and
then this smart youngster here may take his schooling at Natchez, and
keep a spell at home every Sunday into the bargain. Now, then, what
d'ye say to me? - am I the man to manage the world, or am I not?'
'Then I'll not run away after nobody!' exclaimed the boy, too much
delighted with the news to be perfectly discreet; 'only tell me,
father, the name of the new place?'
'The lot's called Mount Etna but it isn't much of a mount either,
seeing that it's jest on the water level, or near it. Howsomever, it's
dreadful fine land. What shall you say, Cli, to have a nigger of our
own
to slave it for us?'
'My - !' exclaimed both the women at once; for the glory off possessing
a negro inspired even the languid Portia. 'Well, now, Jonathan, that
will be jam!' added Clio, rubbing her hands with delight. 'Will it be a
he or a she, Jonathan?'
'A he, Cli, - a he, to begin with. Who knows what we may come to? If
things goes well, I may buy a gal or two; and in time, if we progress,
we may breed some young ones. Nothing pays better - 'specially so near
upon the canes'.
'Well, now, but that beats all natur, for we to have a gang of niggers
of our own! Oh, Jonathan, Jonathan! how I wish that Washington
Buckskin could see us then!'
'Ay, may be he'd sing to another tune, Cli. Howsomever, you're an old
maid, now, sis, and 'tis all the better for both of us'.
There was no tendency to repining in the temper of Clio, so that she
did not give above half a sigh to the memory of the too prudent lover
of her youth, and the next moment was looking forward as cheerfully as
if she had never known disappointment. She listened to her brother's
detail of cows, and hogs, and poultry innumerable, all to be under her
especial care, without thinking it possible that she could ever work
too hard, and abandoned her imagination wholly to the delightful
occupation of painting the joy of her eyes and the darling of her
heart, her own beautiful Jonathan Jefferson, progressing with rapid
strides towards the exalted rank she had ever predicted he would hold.
CHAPTER IV
t three
o'clock in the afternoon on the following Wednesday, the sound
of an approaching gentle trot was again heard among the bushes
behind the shaanty; and immediately afterwards, the same horseman
appeared in sight, and the same ceremony of evacuating the premises was
performed by the three inferior members of the family, its chief
receiving his guest, as before, to a private audience; the only
difference being, that in addition to the demi-john and drinking cups,
a stout canvass bag was laid on the table between them.
The period of the interview, however, was now passed in a manner
infinitely less tedious by those who were banished from it than the
last. The spirits of all were elevated by the belief that in that very
hour, while they stood and sat idly looking at each other, a
goodly store of dollars were passing into the possession of their race.
'Well, now, Porchy,' said the happy and triumphant Clio, 'isn't our
Jonathan first-rate? To think of our living so elegant and bellyfull
for ten years, and then, 'stead of finding that we had come to the end
of everything, as so many do, to see him haul in - it don't matter how
much, but such a capital lot of hard money, and not copper neither!
'And how much is it, Aunt Cli?' asked the boy, throwing his arm
coaxingly round the neck of his aunt. 'I know you can tell if you'd
speak. Come, now, aunty, I won't be after no mischief for a week
if you''ll just tell me how many dollars father's having gived to him
this minute?'
But Clio, if she knew the secret, proved herself a trustworthy
confidant, for not even the cajoleries of young Jonathan could induce
her to betray it.
'I wonder if I shall shake as much in the new lot?, said poor Portia,
looking almost hopefully as she added. 'Do you know, Cli, I do believe
it be this unaccountable big river, and the bushes and the bogs, that
make me so sick everlasting, 'cause I never was so afore I comed here'.
The kind-hearted Clio encouraged her hopes, and recounted sundry
histories which she had heard from their forest customers, of the
betterfying effects of the handsome locations round Natchez.
'Tis the most splendid bluff on the river', she continued, 'that's a
fact; and though our lot bean't on the very tip-top of it, maybe, yet
we'll have the benefit of it, sis, that's past doubting'.
'And do the folks live fine there, Aunt Cli?' inquired the boy eagerly:
'have they got cabins to sit in?'
'To be sure they have, my darling, as fine as New Orlines; and thee
shall be the finest of 'em all, my glory, - mark my words if thee
shan't'.
So numerous were the questions and so agreeable the answers which arose
during this conversation on the wood-stacks, that when the door of the
shanty opened and the two men appeared at it, Portia's observations was.
'My -- ! if they haven't done finished already!'
Short as the time appeared, however, the business of the meeting had
been fully competed to the entire satisfaction of both parties; a fact
of which Whitlaw's famly had not the slightest doubt, though on this
occasion, as on many others, his greatness showed itself by not
uttering a single word, after the departure of his guest, on the
subject on which he knew that his humble dependents were longing to
hear him speak. But these dignified fits of silence never occurred,
excepting when the Western potentate (of whom there are nearly as many
as there are families in the New World) felt himself particularly well
pleased with the facts he could, but would not, communicate. When it
was otherwise - when some bargain had gone against him, or some
enterprise had proved more difficult or less profitable than he
expected, then each and every one belonging to him was sure to hear of
it. Yet Whitlaw was by no means a particularly ill-tempered man: he was
only a free-born tyrant.
This negative assurance, therefore, that all was right, perfectly
satisfied the reasonable Clio; sent the acute heir to his maple-tree to
enjoy a delightful half-hour in counting over his own hoard, and
guessing that somehow or other he would soon find a way to double it;
and cheered the languid heart of Portia, as she sought a log wherewith
to boil her coffee, by suggesting that her own nigger should do that
job for her before long.
At an early hour on the following morning, the gallant 'Lady
Washington' steamer appeared in sight, coming down the river 'like a
queen' (a simile, by the way, much oftener made use of in the republic
of America than in all the kingdons and queendoms of Europe); and
Jonathan Whitlaw, with the alacrity of a man intent on a scheme at once
ambitious and prudent, sprang on board as soon as he had pocketed the
price of the wood which Clio and the boy had measured out for her.
In less than three hours after, another steam-boat stopped at Whitlaw's
station; and just as young Jonathan was preparing to enjoy once
more an unchecked visit on board, the stranger who had distinguished
him on the day he fell into the river made him a sign to return, and
immediately after joined him on the bank.
The boy knew there was no time to lose, as the boat was not of large
dimension, and the quantity of wood she would require must be
proportionably small; yet he would not take his visitor into the
shanty, lest such allusion might be made to their former interview as
would lead to inquiries and chidings, which it would be better to
avoid. His mother was, as usual, hovering over the fire; and his aunt
too busily engaged in measuring the wood, to do more than give him a
wondering glance in passing, as he led the well-dressed stranger beyond
the little clearing, and up the narrow path which traversed the forest.
'Where are you taking me, boy?' said the gentleman stopping short,
after he had taken two steps into the bush: 'I don't want to explore
the
forest, my lad, and the boat will be off in no time. Have you asked
your
father about going with me? I am ready to take you, if you're ready to
come, and promise to be steady and faithful, and learn smart, and do
all I bid you'.
'I would do all that, and more,' answered the boy, 'if father was going
to bide here; for I don't choose to live like a bear and an
alligator any longer, -- and that's what they say I do, aboard the
boats. But father is going to take us to a right-down elegant store
above Natchez; and I'm to be larnt to read, and we're to have a black
nigger of our own; and so I don't want to run away now'.
'Run away! - I never asked you to run away, child. What put that frolic
into your head? However, if you are going to school, that is all right:
and if you are the fine boy I take you for, we may be better acquainted
yet. What's the name of your
father's lot, boy? - d'y know?'
'Mount Etna', answered young Jonathan.
'Mount Etna, is it? I know that bit well; 'tis a thriving job, - your
father's up to a thing or two, I take it. There's the bell: - remember,
boy, my name's Colonel Dart; and if you take your learning well, I'll
make a gentleman of you.'
'Father will make a gentleman of me,' said the young republican,
stoutly; 'and Aunt Cli will send me up to Congress'.
'Will she?' said the stranger, laughing: 'that's well; but I may be a
useful friend, nevertheless. If you are at school at Natchez, I shall
see you. Do not forget Colonel Dart'.
So saying, the stranger walked off, and immediately re-embarked,
leaving our hero rather puzzled as to why he 'seemed so dreadful fond
of him'.
Of Colonel Dart we shall hear more hereafter; but for the present the
reader must share the young Whitlaw's doubts concerning him. Before
the circumstances of his visiting Mohana be dismissed, however, a
trait of Jonathan Jefferson's ingenuity must be recorded, as it
may assist in the development of his interesting character.
To any other boy of his age, the close inquiries of Clio would
probably have proved exceedingly embarrassing; but he baffled them
completely, and that almost by a single word.
'That's altogether new, Jonathan', said his puzzled aunt, 'for you to
go
and take the fine folks out of the boats, and bring 'em to walk about
in the bush, just to keep you company. What
for
did
that
man
come to you; tell me, Jonathan, will you?'
'He came on shore, aunt, to look for some dreadful fine moss that he
says grows hereabouts, to give to his mocking-bird that was sick'.
'And did he find it, Jonathan?'
'No, Aunt Cli, 'cause the bell rung, and he was obliged to run back
before he had done looked for it.'
What the secret motive might be which led this very intelligent young
citizen to conceal the visit of Colonel Dart from his indulgent aunt,
who, as he very well knew, unfailingly approved of everything he did, I
have never been able to ascertain. Perhaps it was the result of having
watched those dignified concealments of his father, one instance of
which has been recently mentioned; or it might originate solely in that
instinctive fear of 'getting into trouble', with which the inhabitants
of the United States so often appear to be haunted. If this be so, it
may unquestionably be classed as one of the kind provisions of
nature, which is often found to furnish those creatures with the power
of defence who are peculiarly exposed to danger: and in a country where
one half of the intercourse between man and man consists in asking
questions, the faculty which teaches to evade them may well be classed
as a blessing.
On this occasion young Jonathan's little invention was perfectly
successful; Aunt Cli asked no more questions, and the visit of Colonel
Dart was entirely forgotten, except by the object of it.
Meanwhile the labours of the indefatigable Clio seemed involuntarily
and almost unconsciously to relax. She felt that she was no longer at
home - 'It arn't our own now,' was a frequent phrase, and a more
frequent thought; and excepting that she continued to tend the store
and milk the cow, and cook a spell, and wash a little, Clio would have
been positively idle. All the leisure, however, which this change in
her habits left her, was fully occupied by listening to and answering
all the questions of Portia and the boy respecting what they should
find at Mount Etna. Tough Clio, in truth, knew no more about the place
than themselves, the habit of resorting to her at all times and
seasons, whether for aid, advice, or instruction, was so strong, that
had a person born and bred on the spot they were to inhabit been
present with them it is probable that every inquiry concerning it would
still have been addressed to Clio.
For some days after the departure of Whitlaw the time passed pleasantly
enough. They had plenty to eat, and to talk about, and not too much to
do. But by degrees they began to find themselves embarrassed. Some of
their articles of sale in the store were exhausted, and the steamboats
passed on without stopping, for the last cord of wood was sold. Just at
this critical juncture, when they began to feel themselves almost
desolate with their liberty and their idleness, the great man returned,
and in a moment everything was again in a state of activity.
Two men landed with him. One of these, a young fellow under twenty, the
future proprietor of Mahana Creek and all Mr Whitlaw's improvements,
was the son of the 'Major' who had made the bargain; and who thought he
had nobly provided for him, and a penniless girl of sixteen whom he had
just married, by placing them, as he observed, 'at a capital station
and store, where they would be sure to take dollars, if the fever did
not chance to take them': but at any rate, 'sons what married that
fashion must be provided for one way or another'.
The other companion of Whitlaw appeared to wait his orders, which were
promptly given; and while the young bridegroom, with an air melancholy
enough, stood gazing around upon the improved, but still most
wretched-looking abode, they went together into the store, to which
Clio was summoned to follow them, and began the business without delay.
'Hand us down all them notions on that side, Cli - and I'll set to work
upon this quarter. Take care of the dry goods - don't let them
domestics get rumpled up that fashion, and mind the baccy and the
candles and the whisky. Lay every notion together with its like, and
mix nothing. And now, Squire Higgins, get your writing-tackle ready and
begin.
Jonathan Whitlaw then began calling over all the remaining stock of his
store; a complete inventory and valuation of which was made out, and
signed by Squire Higgins. This operation, together with copying the
whole, took about four hours; after which the three men each swallowed
about half a pint of whisky, and then the two strangers departed
together by the forest path.
Whitlaw's first words, after they were gone, were - 'Now give ma a lot
of supper, Cli - and then I'll tell you what to do next'.
Curiosity as well as good-will brought a plentiful meal upon the
original deal-table without delay. Portia, however, sat as still and as
silent as if made of wax, to which material, allowing for a slight
tinge of blue, instead of red, in her complexion, she bore a strong
resemblance; while Jonathan junior stood eyeing his father from as
great a distance as the room permitted - for he had not yet been
addressed as J.J., and thought it safest not to approach. But Clio,
bold in usefulness and good-humour, after spreading forth the
substantial meal in her very best manner, sat smilingly down opposite
her imperious brother, and said cheerfully, 'Well, Bub, and what am I
to do next?'
'Drink this,' answered the master of the shanty, pushing his own
whisky-cup towards her, - 'drink now, Cli, if you never drink
again,
to
the good luck and prosperity of Mount Etna!'
Clio obeyed, and having swallowed about a spoonful of the noxious
decoction, which unadulterated is as strange to the lips of the women
as familiar to those of the men of America, she looked at her brother
as if for permission, and then passed the cup to the pale Portia, and
with a good-humoured nod repeated the words she was to say.
'And the boy?' said Whitlaw, looking round for him. 'Where's the great
scholar that is to be? -- Come along, J.J., and drink the toast.'
Thus encouraged, Jonathan Jefferson stood forth, and accepting the
pledge, did such zealous honour to it, that even his father was fain to
cry out, 'Hold! enough!'
No sooner had this ceremony been duly performed, than the abdicating
lord of the Creek again addressed his prime minister Clio.
'Ten years ago and a bit, Cli, and we stood first upon this 'ere very
spot of ground; only there was no rafters above our heds. D'ye mind
that
first night, sis? - how I told you both we could only get a spell of
sleep turn and turn about? That was the first night, and this will be
the last we shall ever sleep or wake at Mohana Creek. And this last
will
be like that first; but except poor Porchy there, who can'd do much
more waking than sleeping, and the boy, who has got the whisky in his
head already, we must go to bed no more than if we expected the bears
and the wolves as we did then. For 'tis by the first steamer that will
pass to-morrow that I calculate upon shipping you off to Natchez. There
you must bide a spell at the Eagle, till I give the word to start for
Mount Etna. But as I've sold all here, I expect we must buy all there;
and if the new things pay me as well as the old, it will do. The Major
was in a bit of a bustle, I guess, to locate the young ones off at
once; but that's no business of mine. Howsumever, we couldn't bargain
it
for the hogs, - I arn't going to make bacon out of other folks' fat,
when I can have my own for the driving. So, ladies, you'll start
without me and the boy. J.J. and I will drive Suc-cherry and the hogs
overland to Mount Etna, as soon as we've see'd you two off; and all the
notions that you don't mean to leave behind must be done packed before
sunrise - mind that.'
Clio was too much accustomed to labour early and late, and to forget
herself and her own comfort on all occasions, to express or to feel the
least discomposure at this sudden warning.
Having first seen Portia and young Jonathan in bed, she set to work
heartily, and all the notions of all the Whitlaws were done packed by
sunrise; - all the notions, at least, save one; and the history of that
one I must recount, as it demonstrates rather a sentimental trait in
Clio's character.
That article of the family possessions not included in the night's
packing was the original suit in which the destitute squatter had
arrived at the Creek, and in which he had performed the first hard and
persevering labour which had laid the foundation of the present rising
state of the Whitlaw race. This suit, having been at length condemned
by the wearer as incapable of further service, was by him thrwn into an
obscure corner of the hovel, and it was only with the morning light
that Clio discovered the well-known relics.
'These shan't be left behind, nohow', she exclaimed, catching them up
from the dark corner in which they reposed; and hastening to the
platform of logs on which the whole family were assembled, she seized
upon a sack not fully crammed, and deposited them within it, just as
the expected steamer came in isght.
Departure from Mohanna Creek
Whitlaw stood beside her as she did so; and as soon as she had
completed the operation, he placed his axe, still good and true, in her
hands, saying in an accent which spoke some sympathy with her feelings.
'Don't mislay nor overlood this, neither, Cli. This is the true friend
that has made my fortune; and though neither he nor I shall have need
to work so hard again maybe, yet we don't choose to be parted'.
The next moment the steam was idly hissing to the air, and in another
the two passengers and their uncouth baggage were on board.
The sigh with which young Jonathan witnessed the departure of his aunt
without him almost amounted to a sob. It was a fine thing, certainly,
to know that he was going to leave the Creek behind him for ever; but
to have left it in a steam-boat would have been so much finer still!
One
circumstrance, however, almost reconciled him to the privation: this
was the seeing his mother and aunt take their places among the
passengers on the deck. 'Then after all they won't see the cabin!' he
exclaimed, 'and maybe they might have expected me to bide by 'em up
there'.
Greatly lightened in spirit by this reflection, he turned to follow his
father, and in half an hour afterward his native hut was left in the
hands of its new proprietor, and my hero, following by his father, and
preceded by Suc-cherry and a score of fat hogs, leashed together like
hounds, and kept in tolerably good marching order by Watch, the old
partner of their emigration, took for the last time that forest path
which it was the glory of his father to have made.
* * * * *
Some apology may be due to the reader for having so long detained him
in a scene which has so little to excite either interest or sympathy;
but the character as well as the history of my hero would have been
incomplete without it. We have now to transport his family to their new
dwelling; and having established them there, we shall pass more rapidly
over the next few years, that we may at once bring him to a period when
the business of life begins.
CHAPTER V
he new
habitation purchased by Jonathan Whitlaw at the distance of seven miles
from Natchez, though it was, as he very accurately described it, well
cleared of everything resembling a tree, was nevertheless, whatever he
might think of it, considerably more 'in the bush' than New Orleans. To
speak correctly, Mount Etna was itself not 'bush' which, in the
language of the country, means uncleared ground; though it was
surrounded in every direction, but one, with forest as primeval as that
he had left behind him at Mohana Creek.
But the clearing in that one direction did in truth make all the
difference imaginable. For, in the first place, it opened upon various
paths, leading to a variety of not very distant dwellings; and the
principal of these paths was a good sound corduroy road all the way to
Natchez. In the next place, this near clearing was in part
occupied by a settlement of some years' standing, separated from
that of Whitlaw only by a few acres of forest, through which ran the
boundary line of the two properties, and which contained within itself
so many essential elements of good neighbourhood, that it was able more
effectually to neutralize the evils usually consequent upon living in
the bush than all the mere clearing in the world.
This settlement, already well known for many miles round, have been
named Reichland by the German proprietor, who, about five years before,
had taken possession of it as a poor man, but who was now in a very
fair way of becoming a rich one.
Frederick Steinmark was the youngest of a large family of the secondary
class of nobility in Bavaria. His father, himself a colonel of
dragoons, had successively placed five hopeful sons to cut their way to
doubtful fortune in his own profession; but Frederick, having very
early charged himself with a wife, accepted the offer of his eldest
brother, who had married an heiress of large landed property in
Westphalia, to settle himself as the cultivator of one of the large
farms acquired by his marriage, and sufficiently near the lady's
baronial mansion to nsure to the strongly-attached brothers easy and
constant intercourse. Frederick Steinmark was of a character so
essentially exalted in itself, that whatever station he had filled must
have received rather than conferred dignity by his belonging to it. As
a cultivator of the ground, he was at once the most active,
persevering, patient, and enterprising. His clear and commanding
intellect showed itself inevitably in all he did; but its application
was always regulated by a species of practical good sense, which those
who did not fully comprehend his character were often surprised to find
in a man whose speculations were of so lofty a nature.
For several years after the marriage of the two brothers, which took
place within the same year, their vicinity was a source of the truest
happiness to both; but a circumstance then occurred which, though it
rather increased than lessened the mutual esteem and affection which
existed between them, completely poisoned the pleasure of their daily
intercourse. The baroness and her humbler sister, both presented a son
to their husbands within the first year of their mariage. This formed
at first a sort of tie between them, so numberless were the little
circumstances interesting to the one which were infallibly interesting
to the other also - but it was in fact the only one; for nature never
formed two beings less calculated to assimilate than the haughty,
artifical, cold-hearted baroness, Karoline von Uberkümpfer, and
the gentle, simple, good and kind Mary Smith, whose unaffected natural
graces had captivated the heart of the young Frederick Steinmark in one
of those rambles in England, which neither a slender purse, nor the
necessity of devoting himself to some profession, had prevented the
ardent-minded young man from making to most of the countries of Europe.
The Baron Steinmark loved and valued his charming sister-in-law as she
deserved; but not all his influence could prevent his lady from
treating her as almost a servile dependent; and nothing but the devoted
love which Mary bore her husband could have enabled her to endure year
after year the series of petty impertinences which the weak, but
wilful-minded, baroness delighted to inflict.
Unfortunately for Mary, the high respect, perfect love, and entire
esteem felt for her by her husband produced an effect respecting the
intercourse between the sisters exactly the reverse of what they ought
to have done. For his noble sister he had so utter and profound
contempt, that for years it never entered into his imagination that his
intelligent, right-thinking wife could be other than an object of
respect and deference to her.
Frederick Steinmark was absent-minded to excess; innumerable
circumstances daily passed before his eyes without his being in the
least degree conscious of them; and from the hour they married, Mary
had never in any single instance called his attention - which, absent
as he was, could ever be roused by her - to what was likely to give him
pain.
When at length, therefore, accident chanced to open his eyes at once
and for ever to the fact, that the woman he reverenced and loved was
the object of the most insolent contempt to his brother's rich and
noble but most silly wife, his resolution was at once taken; he decided
irrevocably upon leaving his farm and the neighbourhood. The baron knew
his brother too well to believe for a moment that it would be possible
to shake his resolution: there had long been a sort of tacit
understanding between him and Mary on the subject of the baroness; upon
every occasion on which her insolence broke out in his presence, his
respect and affection appeared to be redoubled; and though not a word
was said on the subject, the keeping the unsuspicious Frederick from
perceiving it became a mutual object.
It would but delay the narrative unnecessarily were I to recount the
particulars of the scene which at length opened Frederick's eyes to the
position which his wife held in the estimation of the haughty baroness.
Her son and heir - who was moreover her only child - was an agent in
it; and had Mary wanted any reason beyond her husband's will to
reconcile her to leaving her comfortable home, it would have been
furnished by the fear that the baron's anger towards the boy, if often
called forth in the same way, might generate a feeling between the
father and son deeply injurious to the happiness of both.
One long evening's confidential conversation with his brother sufficed
to decide whither Frederick and his family should betake themselves in
search of a new home. The years of union which had given one son to the
baron, had brought four boys and a girl to Frederick; and the future
destination of these precious boys had already become a theme of
anxious speculation to him. No sooner had he decided upon leaving the
protection and immediate neighbourhood of his brother, than the idea of
the new world suggested itself, as offering the best hope, not only for
the immediate support, but for the ultimate provision of his family.
When he first named it, however, the baron vehemently opposed the
project, which he declared had less of kindness and of wisdom in it
than he had looked for. But the scheme had taken strong possession of
Frederick's mind, and never through their lives had the elder ever
found it possible to resist the forcible eloquence of the younger
brother on any point upon which it had been fervently employed. So, ere
they parted, the German noble, though sorely against his inclination,
felt himself obliged to avow, that if he were able to persuade this
enterprising brother to abandon his American project, he had no power
to propose a better.
The financial arrangements were soon settled between them, for no
difficulties arose but such as were generated by a struggle of
liberality. It was settled that the baron should himself become the
purchaser of all his brother's large stock, as well as of the
furniture, and improvements of the house and premises. Beyond this,
nothing could persuade Frederick to go, in accepting the urgent offers
of his wealthy brother: who, either as a gift or a loan, was most
anxious to press upon him such a sum as he thought might secure him
from every ill convenience in the prosecution of his enterprise. But
strong as were the feelings which led to this expedition, they had not
driven Frederick Steinmark to undertake a mode of life of which he was
ignorant: at least all the information that books could give on the
subject was familiar to him, and he well knew that the sum he could
command was fully sufficient to afford every facility to a settler
whose intention it was to bring up his family in habits of active
industry.
In the month of March, 18--, Frederick Steinmark, his wife and five
children, arrived at New Orleans; and in less than a month afterwards
they were inhabiting a large and partically cleared estate which they
had purchased near Natchez. From that period, to the month of August,
eight years afterwards, at which time my hero and his family became
their neighbours, not a year, not a month - perhaps not a day had
passed which had not tended to improve the house and estate of
Reichland; and though no slave had ever worked for a single hour upon
it,
the land was held to be the best cultivated and most productive in the
neighbourhood.
But nothwithstanding this success, the task of settling a European
family in a forest in Louisiana had not been performed without
privations and annoyances of many kinds; but these chiefly fell upon
Mary, and were met and conquered with a degree of quiet resolution
which robbed them of half their evil power.
The situation of the Steinmark family was in truth exactly that best
calculated to encounter the hazards of emigration with advantage. In
addition to health of mind and body, they brought to the task, zeal,
courage, industry, patience, and perseverance, together with both
knowledge and money enough to spare them the necessity of enduring the
first dreadful destitution of all things, which those who enter the
forest with the axe alone must abide; or the mortification, almost
greater still, of bestowing labour and care in vain, because ignorantly.
When it was known at Reichland that a family of new-comers had arrived
at Mount Etna, the first thought which took possession of the whole
Steinmark household was - 'what can we do to help them?'
'They cannot have any milk yet, mother - or, at any rate, any butter',
observed Lotte Steinmark, who, at the age of eleven, was dairy
woman-in-chief of Reichland: 'may I send over two of my pretty pats
that I churned last night? Fritz will take them for me.'
'And a loaf, Lottchen, may be welcome too, I think,' replied her
mother: 'nobody can bake in a moment. Go, Fritz - and you, Karl, go
too,' she continued, addressing her two eldest sons; 'take the loaf,
and some of Lotte's butter, and ask if there is anything we can do to
assist them'.
CHAPTER VI
he friendly
embassy from Reichland found the Whitlaw family in a state of great
confusion; but this was occasioned quite as much by their amazement at
finding themselves the inhabitants of a house with four rooms besides
the store, and three of them with real glass windows, as from any
embarrassment caused by the absence or disorder of the ordinary
comforts of existence. Those who have been well broken in to the system
expressively designated 'getting along', have at least this advantage
over the rest of the huamn race: namely, that nothing which can befall
them can ever put them much out of their way. In addition to this,
Portia and Clio were, at the very instant the young Steinmarks entered,
labouring to stretch their minds to the comprehension, that the seven
chairs, four tables, three crocks, two spiders, six plates, four cups,
etc., etc., etc., which Jonathan senior and Jonathan junior were
unloading from a cart at the door, were really and truly all for their
own use and benefit. So that, instead of a moment of distress, it was a
moment of triumph; and when Fritz, in an accent of kindness, and almost
of compassion, said, addressing Whitlaw, 'Can we help you, sir?', Clio
burst into an irresistible chuckle of delight at this first
opprortunity of display, and exclaimed with one of her happiest and
broadest grins, 'Look here, boys!''
The two lads, however, altogether mistook her meaning; but looking in
the direction she pointed, at the comfortless confusion which
surrounded her, and believing that they were called upon to pity it,
replied at the same moment, 'It must be very bad for you, indeed, but
if you will tell us what to do, we can soon help to make it better'.
'Bad!' exclaimed Cli; 'now that beats the union! But you look dreadful
good-natured, and will give me a hand with the mealtub anyhow, for I
must be after baking a morsel to eat, I expect; and t'other, maybe,
will be looking up a few sticks for me, while my man Jonathan here
seasons one of them fine new spiders with a little fresh water and a
good rubbing'.
At this mention of bread-making, the young Karl displayed the treasures
of his basket, saying, 'My mother thought you would be too busy to bake
directly, and so she sent me over with this'.
'Does you mother keep store, my lad?' said Whitlaw, coming forward. 'I
was told there was no store within five miles of Mount Etna'.
'I do not believe there is, sir', returned Fritz, who, suddenly
recollecting that the person he was speaking to was himself about to
commence storekeeper for the whole region, comprehended in an instant
the sort of alarm which his voice indicated; and the laughing blue eyes
of the young German exchanged a furtive glance with his brother as he
added, 'But though we do not keep a store, sir, we make bread; and we
shall be very happy if you will accept a loaf of it to save you the
trouble of baking till you are a little settled'.
'Accept the loaf', said Whitlaw, taking it in his hands and examining
its texture. 'Why, it's wheat, and weighs a matter of ten pounds. We
shan't have no such bread for a while, maybe, to pay it back, my lad'.
'Oh! we shall not want it', said the young Karl gaily; 'for we are
not going into a new house, you know'.
'Well, that's considerable civil of them that sent you, my lads, anyhow
- and we must do a turn for it, I expect, when it's wanted'.
While this conversation was going on, the young Jonathan had been
occupied by diving into the basket, and at length produced two
half-pounds of Lotte's dainty butter, one in each hand, held with a
tight grasp by his not very delicate fingers. The German boys again
looked at each other and prepared to depart.
'And is that there elegant butter a free gift, too?' exclaimed the
delighted Clio, receiving it on a wooden platter from her nephew's
hands.
'Yes, surely,' replied Friz courteously, 'if you will do my little
sister the favour to accept it'.
'If that don't beat all natur!' exclaimed Clio again. 'Well now, I do
expect that we be come among lovely clever people. What do you say to
this, Porchy? - isn't it one thing to come to Mohana Creek, and another
to come to Mount Etna? If we don't have an elegant coffering tonight, I
expect it will be our own fault'.
The good-humoured boys had at least the pleasure of perceiving that
their embassy was productive of great satisfaction to the party for
whose benefit it was intended; and with this report they returned home,
though in the delvery of it a little propensity to smile at the
oddities of the new-comers displayed itself and produced a reproof from
their mother.
'I will be revenged of you for suspecting me of being inclined to
laugh at "poor hardworking country folks", mother mine', said the
saucy Fritz, 'for I will be present when you first see them yourself,
and I know how you will try to look grave and kind - and yet be ready
to laugh too.'
Fritz, however, was quite wrong. His mother felt not the least
disposition to laugh when introduced to her new neighbours. It took her
but a short time to understand them all thoroughly, except the boy -
and she confessed that the little Jonathan produced a unpleasant effect
upon her, because his young head ever seemed to have within it more
than he appeared willing to display; a peculiarity at his age which
gave her, as she avowed, a sort of instinctive fear of the boy, though
she knew not exactly why.
Of the other members of the family her judgment was quickly and
correctly formed. She considered Whitlaw as respectable for his active
and persevering industry; Portia as pitiable for the hopeless languor
of ill health which constantly oppressed her; and Clio as estimable and
even admirable in no common degree, from the devotion of her attachment
to her family, and the rare and complete absence of every species of
selfishness. The coarse breeding of the whole party was no annoynance
to her whatever. The refinement of Mary Steinmark lay not on the
surface; and in this, as well as in a multitude of other instances
which had occurred since her residence in Louisiana, she fell without
distate into frequent and familiar intercourse with neighbours whose
minds she knew could not comprehend the language of hers, and to whom
therefore her mind never spoke, except in those few sentences of
universal dialect which relate to domestic usefulness and household
cares. The rest was for her husband and her children: nor did she ever
lament that the circle in which she was known, and valued at her worth,
was not a larger one.
It was some days before Frederick Steinmark chanced to see either of
his new neighbours, and it was longer still before he perceived
anything about them sufficiently interesting to greatly awaken his
attention. When Whitlaw first took possession of the place, his whole
attention was directed to the arrangement and management of his large
store; and perhaps the only affair of great and important interest to
man on which Frederick Steinmark found it impossible to fix his
attention was the business of a retail store. He had therefore in fact
almost forgotten his new neighbour, when Whitlaw himself made a visit
to Reichland, and desired to speak to 'the master'.
He was immediately ushered into a room exceedingly unlike any he had
ever before entered; so much so, indeed, that, contrary to his usual
habits, his business was for a moment forgotten as he looked around him.
The room was large and lofty; the walls were neither papered nor
plastered, but arranged neatly enough, with smooth deal boards, laid
one over the other in the manner that shipwrights call clinker-built.
The floor was covered with peculiarly fine Indian matting; and the four
large windows, which opened upon a long glade of the forest, well
cleared, but still retaining a few scattered groups of fine trees, were
furnished with blinds of the same beautiful manufacture, but of a still
finer fabric. One side of the room was covered from the floor nearly to
the ceiling with books; on another hung an admirable portrait of the
Baron Steinmark; and on a table beneath it lay sundry unintelligible
objects - mathematical instruments, models of agricultural implements,
and several articles belonging to a chemical apparatus which Steinmark
had been using. On one side stood an electrical machine, on the other a
pair of large globes; while a variety of tables of all sorts and sizes
in different parts of the room, some covered with needlework, others
with implements for drawing, some prepared for writing and some for
reading, would have told a stranger more initiated into such mysteries
than Whitlaw, that the room was the usual habitation of a large family
accustomed to occupation.
The whole aspect of the apartment was, however, such as might very
naturally surprise a back-woodsman, who fancied he was come to visit a
man of his own class. Had the intruder been less intelligent, he would
have been less puzzled; but Whitlaw plainly perceived that there was
present before his eyes much more than had ever been dreamed of in his
philosophy; and, as before stated, a short space was occupied ere he
entered upon the business which brought him there, in looking round
upon these objects, which were alike new and incomprehensible.
At length, however, he recovered the bold and pithy abruptness of his
usual manner.
'I expect maybe that you arn't much of a cultivator after
all; but what I comed for, neighbour, was to ask which side of the
hollow that lies in the bush between your lands and mine I should run
my zig-zag? But maybe you arn't competent to tell?'
'Mr Whitlaw, I presume', said Frederick Steinmark, rising to meet him.
'The same, sir', was the reply.
'I believe, sir, I shall be able to show you where your fence should be
placed', resuemed the German - whose uion with an Englishwoman had made
the language of America as familiar to him as his own; and going to one
of the numerous tables, he took thence a small roll, which being
opened, displayed a map of the estate of Reichland; the hollow, which
was in fact an important water-course, being very distinctly marked as
within its boundary.
'Where my property ends, Mr Whitlaw, I imagine that yours must begin;
and therefore, as you perceive, your fence must run at a distance of
one hundred yards on the western side of the "watercourse"'.
Jonathan Whitlaw knew this perfectly well before he made the present
inquiry; but having, with his usual sagacity, perceived that this
'hollow' as he chose to term it, might by a little ingenuity be
converted in a very valuable water 'privilege', he thought it was at
least worth while to try if he could not persuade his neighbour either
that it belonged to him, or at any rate that, being a matter of no
consequence, it could make no difference whether he included it within
his fence or not. He now saw that upon the question of boundary his
neighbour was a match for him; but it did not follow that he must know
the
value of the 'bit' upon which he had set his heart, and accordingly he
proceeded to state his wishes, but with an air of the most perfect
indifference.
'Ah, well, that rough bit doesn't matter much, I expect, nor a yard or
two of bush neither, to such a large tract as yours - or mine either,
for that matter; so if it don't make no difference to you, neighbour, I
calculate that I'll run the zig-zag on this side the gap, just for the
sake of two or three sugar maples that are scanty with me - but you've
got bushels of 'em'.
'It is plain, Mr Whitlaw', replied the German with a good-humoured
smile, 'that you are a stranger here as yet, or you would not consider
my water-course so trifling a concern. In cultivating so large an
estate as this with a small capital, it is necessary to do things by
degrees: but I fully intend in about two years, when my boy will be old
enough to undertake the business of a mill, to turn the drains of my
plantations into that water-course, and erect a mill over it, which, if
I am not deceived in the quantity of water I expect to obtain, will be
able to work nine months out of twelve'.
This unreserved exposure of plans and projects, in which it was by no
means the custom of the country to indulge even to familiar friends,
struck Whitlaw as a proof, that however ably his neighbour might have
conceived the scheme (which was, in truth, exactly the same as he had
himself imagined), he was nevertheless but a soft man, who could not be
very difficult to manage.
When Steinmark ceased speaking, his visitor shook his head, and smiled
with a look of much intelligence. 'You're counting a little too fast
there, master, I expect,' he said, 'No man as knows the country well
would ever think of laying out good dollars in such a wild scheme as
building a mill over that bit of a dry hollow. Howsomever, that's no
business of mine, and I hope the ground will change its natur in time
to accomodate your son; but if so be as this scheme isn't to be tried
for two years to come, I calculate that you won't have no objection to
my
having the sugar maples till such time as you sets about your mill?'
'The sugar maples are certainly not of much consequence, being in great
abundance all round us,' replied Steinmark; 'but do you propose to
enclose those you mention within your zig-zag?'
'Well, then, I think I may as well - and at any rate a zig-zag is easy
moved at any time,' returned Jonathan Whitlaw.
There was such a fund of deep-seated genuine frankness and honour in
the character of Frederick Steinmark, that it was not very easy to
awaken suspicion within him; but Whitlaw's cool assumption of his
consent to enclose a valuable part of his property within his own fence
was too plain an indication of his spirit to be mistaken, and it was
therefore with equal promptness and decision that the master of the
house replied: 'No, Mr Whitlaw, your fence must not enclose my
property, but only your own, sir'.
Whitlaw, as we have seen, was a shrewd, and in most things which
regarded his interest, a right-judging man; but on this occasion he had
found himself at fault, and then blundered most egregiously.
Accustomed, as all men must be, whose lives are spent in turning
everything to profit, to judge quickly and act promptly, the wits of
the proprietor of Mount Etna had not been idle during the interval in
which he was occupied in taking note of the singular phenomena which
surrounded him on entering Frederick Steinmark's apartment. He knew
little, it is true, of the use and destination of most of the objects
he saw there; but he immediately concluded that the man whose hours
were spent in occupations, of which he himself knew nothing, was likely
enough to be ignorant, in his turn, of those points of human vision of
which he knew a great deal.
'What should he know of a water privilege?' was the reflection that
occurred to him, as he contemplated the various gimcracks, which to him
had greatly the appearance of playthings, with which the room was
filled; - 'no more than a piccaninny nigger, I be bound for it:' and
thereupon followed the short conversation that has been related.
Frederick Steinmark rose as he spoke the concluding words; and there
was that in his aspect which showed Whitlaw, however little he had been
accustomed to study such a one, that the conference was ended, and
nothing to be hoped from the ignorance or folly of the owner of
Reichland.
The feeling of vexation and resentment with which this conviction was
accompanied might appear greater than the occasion could account for,
were the state of Whitlaw's mind as he left the house to be fully
described. That a man should inwardly swear to take vengeance against a
neighbour solely because he chose to retain possession of what was his
own, might be deemed unnatural - yet so it was; and neither time nor
reflection ever removed from Whitlaw's mind the conviction that he was
an oppressed and injured man, that Frederick Steinmark had used him
ill, and that he had the right, as well as the will, to revenge himself
for it at every convenient opportunity.
This schism between the heads of the two families did not, however, in
any degree destroy the friendly feeling which the constant performance
of kind offices on one side, and the easy acceptance of them on the
other occasioned. After a passing smile at the foolish fellow's saucy
attempt to invade his property, Steinmark remembered it no more; and
the
only effect which the circumstance left on his feelings was, that he
scarcely ever spoke of his new neighbour again.
Clio was indeed the principal link between the two houses. Her
excellent qualities were fully appreciated by every individual of the
Steinmark family, and in return she would at any time have walked
through scorching fire or freezing water to do them service.
During the first few days of their intercourse, the four Steinmark boys
made various good-natured advances to propitiate the friendship of
Jonathan Jefferson; but the principle of repulsion was too strongly,
though unconsciously, at work within the parties to permit anything
like friendship to exist between them, The Steinmarks were all of them
clever intelligent lads - so, most certainly, was Jonathan Jefferson
Whitlaw; but it would be more possible for a Newton to feel and to find
sympathy with a being of a mind positively imbecile, than for honour,
honesty, and sincerity to bind itself to wily cunning and to craft
meanness.
The dislike of the Steinmarks for young Whitlaw only demonstrated
itself, however, by a cessation of those little sociabilities with
which at his first arrival he was always greeted by them whenever
accident brought them together. Neighbourly civility, and ever-ready
cheerful good-will, whenever it was in their power to be useful, were
still at the service of the whole Whitlaw family; but unless something
of this sort was called for, the intercourse between them was not
frequent.
On the part of young Jonathan, the feeling of dislike was both stronger
and more definite: he at once feared, envied, and despised the whole
family; and he could, had it been necessary or profitable, have given
excellent good reasons for each and all of these feelings. As it was,
however, he deemed it 'wisest, discreetest, best', to say nothing about
it, but to receive in peace and quietness the many little advantages
which the good-nature and liberality of their neighbours afforded him.
There was nevertheless one point on which no calculations of interest
appeared to interfere with the open and sincere avowal of his
sentiments respecting Fritz, Karl, Hermann, and Henrich Steinmark; and
this was as to the mode of their education. Jonathan Jefferson had
ascertained in his first conversation with Henrich, who was nearly his
own age, that neither he nor any of his brothers had ever been at
school; and the profound contempt this avowal generated must have had
something agreeable and soothing in its nature, for never did young
Jonathan sit down after he heard it, with the intention of being
particularly comfortable, without alluding to it.
Nor was the pleasant emotion produced by the mere mention of this
parental neglect on the part of Frederick Steinmark the only advantage
of which it was productive at Mount Etna. No sooner was the fact made
known to Whitlaw, than he determined at once upon sending young
Jonathan to school, though the doing so would rob him of services which
the active business of the store rendered daily more important.
Neither was this the only measure which the spirit of rivalship
accelerated in the Whitlaw family. Frederick Steinmark's large estate
had not a single negro upon it; the labour it required was performed by
himself and his boys, assisted by two German servants who had
accompanied them from the Father-land. This again was a subject of
unmitigated contempt and ridicule. In Louisiana, as Whitlaw remarked,
nobody that was any body would ever think of getting along without a
slave. It was plain that, with all their big clearings and grand house,
the Steinmarks were nothing but a set of beggarly hard-working
foreigners, that did not know what it was to live like gentlemen and
Americans. So Jonathan Whitlaw sent his son to a school at Natchez,
where he was to be taught reading, writing, ciphering 'and the
sciences', for fifteen dolars a quarter; and moreover, he purchased two
stout negroes at the first market held for the sale of such commodities
in his nieghbourhood.
The materials for happiness must vary according to the nature of those
for whose use they are intended. There are some men to whom the
acquistion of a slave would cause a feeling of shame: and there are
some boys whose hearts would swell with sorrow at leaving for the first
time a gentle mother's side, to become one of the jarring elements
which constitute a school. But in the case of the Whitlaws, both father
and son experienced feelings of the most unequivocal delight from these
circumstances. Instead of feeling shame, Jonathan senior swelled with
pride each time his bold triumphant eye met the fearful glance of the
poor wretches he had purchased; and Jonathan junior had need of all his
discretion to conceal the outward expression of the joy he felt at
being within reach of daily watching the knaveries, cruelties,
debaucheries, and drunkenness never absent where a slave population
disgraces the soil, and which, if report say true, may be found in as
great fulness of abomination at Natchez as at any point of earth
afflicted with this curse.
CHAPTER VII
he
following eight years of the life of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw must be
passed over very rapidly by his historian. Sometimes during this
interval he was at school, but oftener constrained by his still
prosperous father to take a spell of labour with him at Mount Etna.
The youth, however, learned to read, to write, and to cast up an
account; and moreover, he had been discovered at the seminary by his
old steam-boat acquaintance, Colonel Dart, who proved to be, as he had
himself stated, a personage every way able to assist the youth in his
meritorious wish of advancing his fortune.
Colonel Dart possessed the largest estate and was much the largest
slave-holder in the neighbourhood of Natchez. As he was accounted a man
of vast wealth, it must be presumed that his affairs were well managed,
his overseers faithful and careful of his interest, and the numerous
gangs of negroes who worked his plantations as well-ordered as they
were profitable. But though all this might be, and perhaps was the
case, it is nevertheless a certain fact, that Colonel Dart, though a
bachelor and member of Congress to boot, did not always repose upon
roses. Either from natural disposition, or from having some secret
cause of doubt and dread upon his mind, this gentleman passed his life
in a state of gnawing anxiety which the worst flogged negro on his
estate would have had no cause to envy.
Many were the schemes he had imagined by which he might obtain private
and accurate knowledge of all that was going on among the negroes
themselves, and also among the white overseers appointed to superintend
them; and the first idea suggested to him by the display of character
he had witnessed in young Whitlaw was, that if he could get him
sufficiently educated, and attach him closely to his service by
gratifying his avarice and ambition, the total dependence on his favour
in which it would be easy to keep the son of a squatter might prove a
better guarantee for his fidelity, than any he had yet been able to put
in action with the confidential clerks he had hitherto employed.
This scheme was in some degree defeated by the improved condition of
the Whitlaw family; but the idea of one day being able to convert to
his own especial use and benefit the courage, activity, and spirit he
had remarked in the boy, was never lost sight of by the judicious
planter; and he took care, during the time that young Jonathan passed
at Natchez, to impress his observing mind with such a conviction of his
wealth and generosity as to generate a most ardent desire on the part
of the youth to live within the sunshine of his favour.
But for several years Jonathan senior saw more certain profit in
himself in keeping his son at home than in parting with him; and it was
not till he was obliged to confess that the stripling was grown into a
man, that the desired arrangement took place.
At the age of eighteen and a half, Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw was a
tall handsome youth, with a quick restless eye which rarely met that of
the person he conversed with - thin lips, but a set of very fine teeth
within them - a slow and deliberate manner of speaking - and an air of
so much self-possession and confidence, that he was supposed by all who
saw him to be at least two years older than he really was.
Great as was the desire of the youth himself to become one of Colonel
Dart's family, it is probable that even then his father might have made
some difficulty in parting with so useful and efficient a personage,
had not such an alteration taken place in his own family as rendered
the absence of his son rather convenient than otherwise. Poor Portia,
instead of finding her health improve by her change of residence, fell
into a dropsy within a few years after their arrival at Mount Etna,
which in three months put an end to her languishing existence.
Her death was certainly no great loss to any one, and Mr Jonathan
Whitlaw soon conceived hopes that it would prove to him a source of
gain. One of the most constant customers at his store was a Miss
Belinda Tomkins, a young lady of about thirty-five years of age, who
had recently by the death of an uncle become the owner of three stout
male and two female negroes. This noble inheritance immediately
attracted the attention of the neighbourhood, and more than one owner
of
a settlement who lacked sufficient hands to work it were meditating an
attack upon the heiress's heart; but the prompt measures of the widower
baffled them all, and Miss Belinda avowed her readiness to become Mrs
Whitlaw the second, on condition that 'the big son that the por woman
what was gone had left behind her should not be kept at home
everlasting to trouble her'.
Poor Clio heard not of this condition, or it might have broken her
heart; but it was complied with on the part of the father, and thus was
Jonathan Jefferson left at liberty to accept the noble offers made him
by his patron, and to become the inmate of a mansion infinitely finer
than the finest steam-boat on the river.
Colonel Dart had hitherto spoken but vaguely to his young friend of
the duties which it would be his special task to fulfil; and it was not
till they met at breakfast on the day following young Whitlaw's
admission as in inmate at Paradise Plantation, that he began to enter
upon the explanation of his wishes in a manner sufficiently clear and
precise to give the confidential clerk a definite idea of what they
would be.
The time was well chosen for insuring the willing obedience of the
happy youth to any commands that could be laid on him. The display of
Colonel Dart's breakfast-table might have bribed a spirit less pliant
to follow wherever interest led than that of Jonathan Jefferson. The
early and delicious spring of that southern climate had already brought
a world of bright and beautiful flowers into blossom in the spacious
garden upon which the breakfast-room opened. A group of luxuriant
orange-trees sent their fragrance through the large windows; and the
flocks of green birds that ventured to hang upon the branches of the
locust-trees, while they pecked the insects from their bark, looked
like the brightest emeralds in Aladdin's enchanted garden. The whole
scene indeed was one of luxury and wealth: the breakfast-table was
spread with dainties, of which the most 'elegant drams' made a part;
and the great man who was the envied lord of all sat opposite young
Jonathan, courteously presenting hm to partake the good cheer, and
treating him so completely as his equal and friend, that is is not
surprising if the happy youth received every word which fell from his
lips as if he had been listening to the law and the prophets. It was
thus the dialogue ran: -
'You find yourself more pleasant here, Jonathan, than at the wooding
station, or at the store either, I guess? I expect you would not
over-well approve to go back again?'
'No, colonel - I calculate that would not suit me in no way. I always
prefer to progress - the turning back would make me giddy, I guess'.
'Then progress you shall, my fine fellow, or the fault will be your
own, and none other. I think I must begin to let you a little into my
confidence, Jonathan, and then we shall understand one another - ' A
glass of fine rum was here proferred and accepted. 'How many niggers,
Jonathan, do you calculate I may own on this plantation - taking in the
sugar, rice, cotton grounds, household gang, breeders, and all?'
This question piqued the sagacity and judgment of the confidential
clerk, and he pondered upon it so long that his hot-blooded patron
waxed
impatient. 'How the devil should you know, boy? You may say that
straight off, and no shame neither. I'll tell you, Jonathan; I own five
hundred - sound in wind and limb, and some of them the most splendid
patterns that your sharp eyes ever spied. What d'ye say to that, my
lad?'
''Tis grand, colonel. I'd rather own five hundred negurs than be
President. Why, they must sweat into dollars unaccountable'.
'Pretty well for that - and my dollars may roll which way I like. But
for all that, Jonathan, 'tis no joke now-a-days to own five hundred
blacks, I can tell you, boy. While these infernal verment, the
missionary hell-hounds, that the devil has taken it into his head to
send on earth for the alone purpose of plaguing honest men - while they
are creeping about like so many cursed copper-heads among the canes,
'tis no holiday to have five hundred slaves, and know that the best
among 'em would eat your heart if they could catch it, and a
missionary saying grace the while'.
'But we've got no missionaries in Natchez, I expect?' replied the young
man, looking rather anxiously for the colonel's reply.
'And who's to know that, Jonathan? You're a smart lad, Whitlaw, and
that's the reason I've got you here - but you've a thing or two to
learn yet, my fine fellow, before you'll be able to tell me where there
are missionaries, and where there are not. Maybe you calculate upon
their walking about with a cassock and bands? - I wish they did; I wish
to God they did, boy, and I'd have my heel upon their throats slick
enough. But that's not the way in these dreadful times, Jonathan. These
viperous varmint that steal out of Liberia to pick a living out of the
nigger beasts, always take a spell of canting among the plantations
before they set off; and sometimes they come in one shape, and
sometimes in another: there's no knowing when you're free from 'em.
What d'ye think of catching a horse-doctor that pretended he was
going to open a store for drugs - what d'ye think, now, of catching him
in the fact of praying with one of my black devils that was dying of
the
small-pox? True, upon my soul; I was in such an unknown rage that I had
the nigger flogged before my eyes as long as there was life in him; but
as to the white villain, I was obliged to let him go, because at that
time nobody had begun to think of taking their own vengeance upon
whites; but now, my boy, if we catch 'em, the business lies in our own
hand, as right it should. For where will you find any one to do justice
upon the sneaking, canting, rebellious rascals with such hearty
good-will as we that suffers by 'em? And there's no danger at all, -
at least there won't be in a very little time; for it's as clear as the
sun in heaven, that we shall be supported and approved in State,
Senate, and Congress, let us do what we will in self-defence'.
This doctrine of 'self-defence' was already in some degree familiar to
the young man; and in common with the great majority of slave-holders,
Master Jonathan deemed it a most righteous and Christian-like doctrine.
Accordingly he answered with all the zeal and spirit his patron wished,
and with eloquence warmed by a second bumper of rum.
'I'll tell you what it is, Colonel; the man what has not courage to do
vengeance for himself don't deserve the protection of the law in a free
country. It's all very well for the pitiful slaves of the Old World to
sit still when they're injured, twirling their thumbs maybe, till some
feller in a big wig takes their part, and pretends to set all right
again.
That may do, colonel, in the Old World, but it won't serve for us.
What's freedom for, if we can't do what we like with our own born
slaves? There's nothing so despisable in my mind as a man what's afraid
to kick the life out of his own nigger if he sees good. It 'twasn't for
this, I don't see where our great superiosity over the queer English
folks lies, that every man in Congress tells us of as soon as he gets
on his legs. Isn't it that each one man of us here is free to do just
what he likes and nothing else? 'Tis that given us the right to call
ourselves free, and without it I don't see but we're just as bad off as
the fools t'other side the water'.
Though this was a much longer harangue than Colonel Dart was ever in
the habit of listening to, except from himself, the sentiments were in
such perfect accordance with his own, that he not only permitted his
confidential clerk to come to the conclusion of it without
interruption, but very nearly embraced him when he had done.
'You are a glorious fellow, Jonathan,' he exclaimed; 'upon my soul, you
are! Young as you are, you know how to utter the sentiments of a free
people. I shall ever consider you in the light of a friend, and not of
a dependent: and if you will only - ' continued the planter, lowering
his voice, - 'if you will only look out for the enemies of the good
cause, and prove your noble free-born principles in practice, you shall
find than an American citizen knows how to be grateful. And after all,
Jonathan, what can I do with my money, unless it is to reward a true
friend? What family have I got, Jonathan, to trouble myself about?
Half-a-dozen yellow girls and their brats. They may be mine, or they
may be another man's; and I'm sure I don't care a cent whether they're
mine or not, provided I've the privilege of owning them; therefore you
may see, my dear boy, that there's a fine opening at Paradise
Plantation for a bold yong fellow that would prove himself my friend'.
Young Whitlaw sucked in the honied sweetness of these vague but
glorious words; and raising his eyes to those of the colonel, with a
more fixed and steady glance than was usual with him, he replied:
'Try me, colonel, and maybe you'll find me worth something'.
CHAPTER VIII
he eight
years which had produced such important changes in the Whitlaw family,
had not passed without leaving their marks behind them over the
inhabitants of Reichland.
Fritz, the eldest son, had persuaded his father, though not without
difficulty, to permit his trying his fortune with a merchant in
Phladephia, in whose counting-house he had been placed with a
considerable premium by his uncle. For neither time, nor the
reitereated assurances of Frederick Steinmark, that money was in no way
required for the prosperity of himself and his family, could prevent
the baron's affection and liberality from showing themselves whenever
he could find or invent an excuse for making a remittance. Karl, for
the last five years, have been in possession of a well-constructed and
most profitable mill, situated exactly at that point of the hollow way
where the maple trees grew which Jonathan Whitlaw had so greatly wished
to enclose. Hermann was his father's right-hand, and his right-arm,
too, in the management of the farm; but Henrich, the pale and
meditative Henrich, though only five years old when transplanted to the
soil on which he grew, had still the air of an exotic. It was not that
the climate disagreed with him; for though he looked delicate, and was
too tall for his age, having had the full stature of a man, when he had
the muscle of only seventeen years to spport it, he was not in bad
health, but, as his mother used to say, Henrich's imagination had never
got acclimated. The history,
the music, the literature of his own country, were the funds from which
he drew all the ideas which constituted his happiness. Henrich was the
only one of the family who, in reply to the constant inquiries of the
Baron Steinmark, whether he could send nothing from the Old World which
might assist in making their retired abode more agreeable, had
boldly answered 'Yes - books, dearest uncle, German
books, and engravings of the hills and valleys of our father-land, and
songs such as our peasants sing when they are dressing their vines,
send me these, dear uncle, and I will pray for you, - I will pray that
not even in your dreams you may change the dearly loved landscapes of
your own storied land for such dark and dreary forests as those amidst
which we live.'
It was thus Henrich had more than once written to the Westphalian
barons; and, in return, he not only received the gifts he asked, but
with them an earnest invitation to recross the ocean, and return to his
protection and the land of his birth. The thought of this return caused
a joy so vehement in the breast of the enthusiastic boy, that he dared
not trust himself to express it; but, placing the letter in his
father's hand, he hastened to hide himself in the woods, and only
reappeared when he thought he could listen to the paternal decision on
the answer to be given to it, with a proper degree of external
composure.
That answer very nearly killed him, for it was a negative. Frederick
Steinmark could not endure to think that a child of Mary's should be
exposed to the possible insolence of the baroness; and, totaly
unconscious of the blow he was giving, he returned the letter into the
hands of Henrich as soon as he saw him, quietly saying,
'No, Henrich, Europe is no longer the home of my family, nor can I
permit that one should be severed from the rest. You would find no
second mother, my boy, in the Baroness Steinmark'.
The subject was alluded to no more, excepting in those occasional
moments of unreserved intercourse with his sister, which formed the
only charm of his present existence. Lotte synpathised with him, and
this sympathy probably prevented the blow from being mortal.
And what had the eight last years done for Lotte? They had turned a
fair-haired bright-eyed little girl, into one of the loveliest nymphs
that poetry ever fabled, or that nature ever formed. Her features had
all the beautiful regularity of her mother's; but her loveliness was
more derived from a look that recalled the sweet and meditative
countenance of her father, than from all the brightness with which
youth and beauty had adorned her. There was fascination in her eyes,
enchantment in her smile, and, when that look of gentle thoughtfulness
stole upon her face which nature made so remakable in that of
Steinmark, there was a charm, a holiness, an intellect in her beauty,
that made her, even to the accustomed eyes of her family, appear almost
too fair for earth.
This being, so beyond measure lovely, so pure, so innocent, so good, so
guileless - this peerless treasure of the noble forester, unknowingly
attracted the attention of the young Jonatham, while strolling with her
brother Henrich in one of the green glades left by the taste of her
father amidst their cotton-grounds.
The intercourse between the houses of Mount Etna and Reichland had
nearly ceased since the second marriage of Whitlaw. This bride found
nothing to attract her in the manners of her German neighbours, they
owned no slaves, and wore no finery: while, on the other hand, every
member of the Steinmark family thought the time better employed in
attending to the various duties allotted to each, than in listening to
Mrs Whitlaw's expressions of pity at the sufferings they must endure in
consequence of not 'owning any niggers'.
The good Clio, however, still continued to walk over to the farm,
whenever she could be spared from the store, just to see how they all
went on; and the kindly welcome she received from Mary and her
beautiful daughter whenever she appeared, made these stolen visits
become one of her best consolations in the absence of her still
idolized nephew, and the presence of her indolent and very insolent
sister-in-law.
If Jonathan Jefferson felt contempt for the Steinmark family before he
became an inmate of Paradise Plantation, it will be readily believed
that
this contempt was multiplied a thousand-fold afterwards. He was in
truth become a very great man, not only in his own estimation, but in
that of all the slaves, and a great many of the young ladies of
Natchez, and whenever it happened that he encountered either of the
young Germans during his occasional visits to Mount Etna, he invariably
looked at them and their rustic dresses with the most minute attention,
but without betraying the least consciousness that he had ever seen
them before.
It was about six months after his promotion to the honourable situation
of Colonel Dart's confidential clerk, that he obtained, without being
seen himself, an undisturbed stare at Lotte Steinmark. Young Jonathan
was far from insensible to the influence of female beauty; and though
not particularly well qualified to appreciate what was most lovely even
in the personal attractions of this charming girl, he nevertheless
speedily came to the conclusion that she was by far the most beautiful
creature he had ever seen. He suffered the brother and sister to pass
on, however, without emerging from his hiding-place and then turned and
walked slowly towards Mount Etna, pondering upon the possibility of
presenting himself on the footing of a friendly visitor at a house
which he had not entered for the last seven years, and before people to
whom he had at every possible opportunity shown all the impertinence in
his power.
It is no trifling proof of the boldness and hardihood of the youth's
character, that he decided, while these disqualifying recollections
crowded upon him, not to return to Paradise Plantation till he had
renewed his acquaintance with the Steinmark lads, and opened the way to
an intercourse with their beautiful sister. He was willing, however, to
remove some of the difficulties of the enterprise if possible; and
accordingly, on entering the enlarged and beautiful mansion of his
father, which was now never without the dignity of sundry half-naked
negro children round the door, he dispatched a sable messanger into the
house to bring Aunt Cli to him.
Joyfully as ever, she came at his bidding.
'You wants me, my darling?' said she, wiping the hands that had been
cutting cheese and bacon, 'You wants me, Jonathan dear? What can I do
for thee?
'Why, that's more than I can say, Aunt Cli,' returned the enamoured
youth; 'but something must be done, or I shall go crazy. Do you know
Lotte Steinmark since she's been grown a woman?'
'Do I know her, Jonathan? Why isn't she the dearest little soul to me,
next yourself, in the whole Union?'
'Indeed! - that's jam, then. Aunt Cli, I'm in love with her; what d'ye
say to that? I'm mad for love of her, and you must bring us together,
if you die the minute after.'
'My -!' exclaimed Clio, with a grin of the greatest delight. 'If that
bean't the best bit of news I've heard this many a day. Well, now,
Jonathan darling, I'd rather go to your wedding with Lotte Steinmark
for your bride, than see you married to the heiress of fifty niggers'.
The young love whistled Yankee Doodle.
'I had indeed, Jonathan; I'm right down sure she'd be clever to me'.
'Make yourself decent, Aunt Cli,' said the young man, without answering
her remark, 'and walk over with me to the house; move quick, d'ye hear!
and say nothing to nobody.'
Though a multitude of affairs must be given up the while, Clio could
not refuse to comply with a request so every way agreeable, and in a
few minutes she was trotting at a brisk pace after Jonathan as he
strode away towards Reichland.
Ere they had gone many steps, however, the youth turned suddenly round
to her, saying, 'Where do the old folks keep? I've no call to see them,
you know. If I bide in the orchard a spell, can't you go in, and bring
the girl out to me, to take a walk for a bit, or something of that sort?
Clio looked up wistfully in his face, and seemed loath to utter a word
that should check him; but yet, somehow, she did not in her heart
think she could bring out Lotte to walk with Jonathan in the orchard.
'Well, now, Jonathan dear, I expect they might think that funny-like;
mightn't they? She's a shy young thing, that pretty Lotte; and maybe
now you're growed such a unaccountable noble-looking man of a boy, she
mightn't think it first rate decent to run after you into the orchard,
Jonathan'.
'That's all flum, Aunt Cli. People like them, that can't even keep a
nigger to help 'em, had better not be after giving themselves airs, I
can tell 'em. However, I expect you know the whole kit of them best,
Which way had we better get at her?'
'Well now, darling, I don't think we can do anything more likely than
jest to walk in like, as I do by myself; and say "How d'ye get along?"
or summet of that sort, or else jest be after asking them to give or
loan you a thing or two, and then they'll be sure to be joyous to see
us'.
I ask them to give or to loan ME anything! Now do jest
look at them and
me, Aunt Cli, and then say what they've got to loan me. That's all
fudge, and jest shows their poverty-pride: I should like to let them
see my home at Paradise Plantation, with five hundred niggers that all
look fit to drop if I do but turn my eyes upon 'em. They loan me!'
'Well, now, Jonathan, say no more about the loaning: but jest walk
straight in, and see how it will be'.
They had by this time nearly reached the richly-scented portico that
ran round the house, and into which the general sitting room opened.
All farther discussion concerning the manner of their entrance was
rendcred unnecessary, for Lotte herself was standing before the open
window, assisting Henrich to fasten the branches of a clematis, heavy
with blossoms, upon the rustic trellis-work that surrounded the portico.
The impudence of Jonathan very nearly failed him, and he felt a pretty
considerable strong inclination to run awy; but the honest confidence
of the simple-minded Clio came to his aid, and he manfully stood his
ground beside her, as she walked up to the beautiful Lotte, who
welcomed her most kindly.
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw's Visit
to Reichland
Neither the brother or sister, however, had the slightest idea who the
tall stripling might be, who, dressed in the height of New Orleans
elegance, stood bowing with a strange mixture of bashfulness and
audacity beside her.
It was some minutes before it entered Clio's head that it was possible
Lotte and Henrich should not know her nephew Jonathan; but as soon as
the fact became manifest to her capacity, she performed the ceremony of
introduction by saying,
'Well, now, I do believe you have downright forgotten Jonathan, both of
you - and no wonder, seeing he's grow'd so dreadful handsome, and so
tall
and grandlike; but 'tis Jonathan, Lotte. Won't you shake hands with
him?'
'Father and mother will be glad to see you, Clio', replied Lotte,
colouring slightly, and making a movement towards the open window, 'I
think they are both here'.
This palpable evasion of the offered courtesy of hand-shaking, seconded
as it was by a brisk action of the youth's right hand the instant his
aunt's agreeable proposal reached his ears, produced an effect both on
his nerves and temper by no means favourable to the grace of his entry
by the open window. He 'had to do it' however; and following his aunt,
and the beautiful object of his admiration and anger, he suddenly found
himself in the presence also of Frederick Steinmark, Mary, Karl and
Hermann.
The day was Sunday, and the whole family had the air of enjoying the
pleasant idleness, and unbroken intercourse with each other, which it
permitted. Frederick indeed was reading; but the two sons were seated
on each side of the mother, and both seemed enjoying the pleasure of a
very lively conversation, in which she was taking part with as much
animation as either of them.
'Here is Clio, mother, come to see us,' said Lotte as she entered.
'And here is our Jonathan', said Clio, stopping short in her advance
towards Mary, till the young man had reached her side. 'Arn't he
growed,
mistress?'
'Very much grown, Clio', answered May kindly, and turning to Jonathan
she asked him to sit down with a civility which quite surprised him. He
gave her credit, however, for conquering feelings and resentments
respecting him, which in truth it had never entered into her heart to
conceive. She had heard there was a young Whitlaw, and that young
Whitlaw was gone to school, but, further than this, her memory retained
no single idea concerning him.
And even this was, probably, more than Frederick Steinmark knew, or
remembered about him. He raised his eyes from his book, however, and
with his own sweet smile nodded a welcome to the worthy Clio.
'My nephew, Master Steinmark, sir!' said Clio, pushing Jonathan a
little
towards him. Frederick again raised his eyes, but it was evident that
he was puzzled concerning the identity of the smart youth who stood
before him, and with that guilty consciousness of inattention which
absent people often betray, he looked towards his wife and sons to
assist him out of his embarrassment, or, if that were impossible, at
least to relieve him from doing the honours of his house to a guest of
whose existence he could not recall the slightest recollection.
Confident, however, from old experience, of receiving the aid of his
expressive look demanded, he resumed his occupation, and, impossible as
the thing appeared to Jonathan Jefferson, totally forgot that he was in
the room.
Not so Karl, Hermann, or Henrich. The occasional impertinences of their
visitor to themselves were certainly not wholly forgotten; but his
presence recalled idead infinitelydisagreeable, and more
disadvantageous to him, than any remembrances connected merely with
themselves.
Though the young Steinmarks associated as little as was well possible
with the inhabitants of Natchez, the necessary sale of their produce,
and the purchase of articles required in return, made it impossible
that they should be altogether strangers there. Karl, too, in his
vocation of miller, often found himself under the necessity of hearing
more plantation gossip than was either interesting or agreeable; and
both from his customers, and from the general report of Natchez, such a
series of anecdotes had reached the brothers as proved that either
justly or unjustly, the young hero of my tale had already acquired as
general a character for dissolute libertinism as it would have
required at least twice his age to collect round any one name amidst
the more slowly developed vices of Europe.
Nor was this all. The charge of cruelty to the unhappy negroes into
whose secret thoughts he was commissioned to penetrate, and whose
slightest feelings it was his hired service to betray, was spoken of
with loathing and abhorrence even at Natchez. The hearts of the young
Germans seemed to burn within them as Jonathan prepared to seat
himself in the circle that pressed round their mother; and when,
drawing his chair near to that of Lotte, he began smilingly and
familiarly to address her, no consideration of civility, nor even the
accustomed deference to the presence of his parents, could control the
feelings of the impetuous Karl, who, approaching his sister abruptly,
said in a half-whisper, 'Leave the room, Lottchen!' and then, having
stood between her and the object of his indignation till the door
closed behind her, he replaced himself close to his mother, turning his
clear and almost fierce blue eyes upon the guest, with a look from
which
even the accomplished effrontery of Jonathan Jefferson turned abashed.
This scene, which was becomingly extremely unpleasant to every person
present, excepting the absorbed Frederick Steinmark and the
unsuspicious Clio, could not last long. The object which had induced
young Whitlaw to such an act of condescension as paying a voluntary
visit to the 'German boors', as he not very aptly termed the family of
Steinmark, having so strangely withdrawn herself, all which on his part
to prolong the visit vanished; and rising from his chair with his hat
still on his head, and his arms folded on his breast, he stood waiting
with no very amiable feelings, till his aunt should give some
indication that if he bolted through the window, she would follow him.
Clio, however, who perceived not that any thing was amiss, save indeed
the absence of Lotte, whom she every moment expected to see re-enter,
was in no hurry to depart. She hailed the opportunity of exhibiting the
beauty and splendour of her nephew to her friendly neighbours; and it
was not till the swelling and mortified Jonathan had given her sundry
admonitory pokes on the elbow, and finally uttered very audibly, 'You
are going to hide all day, I expect' that the kind-hearted aunt
conceived the possibility that it would be best to depart, even before
one bit of courting had taken place with Lotte.
This visit appeared over-long to more than one of the persons it
brought together; but it would have been well for all, had the effects
of it lasted no longer.
CHAPTER IX
t was not
the habit of the Steinmark family to canvass the failings of any guests
whom chance might bring to visit them in their remote retirement. The
rareness of the ocurrence made the face of the stranger welcome, and
the genuine kindness of the family temper would generally have
prevented any very severe animadversions even in cases where it was not
so.
But on the present occasion the extraordinary conduct of Karl demanded
explanation, and it could only be given by imparting a portion at least
of the information he had received respecting Whitlaw.
Had Lotte been present, this must have been necessarily abridged; but
as it was, Karl felt it a duty sufficiently to enlighten his father and
mother on the subject, to ensure their aid in preventing the repetition
of a visit which for many reasons the young man felt convinced was
especially intended for his sister.
Frederick Steinmark's attention being awakened by the earnest manner of
his son, he listened without any symptoms of absence to all he had to
say, and then replied.
'As far as our Lottchen is concerned, my dear Karl, I hold your
precaution to be needless. Our young neighbour Jonathan would have no
more power to sully the purity that you cherish so fondly, than a cloud
passing before the sun can tarnish in brightness. You were wrong, dear
son, to send her out of the room abruptly. Lotte need not run to be
safe from neighbour Jonathan. In short, Karl, in his capacity of beau
and libertine, I fear him not. But looking at him in his capacity of
slave-driver, I would not much have blamed your warmth, if you had fled
yourself, and dragged us all in a string after you. Human nature can
show nothing so abhorrent in my eyes and my heart as then men who
traffic in the muscles and sinews of the poor negroes; and this fellow,
this young demon, by your account, does worse - he sells himself as a
spy upon their untaught ignorance, that he may betray their idle words
and make them bleed for each each of them! If fiends can take a human
shape, it must be this. Let's talk no more of it; it makes me loathe my
home, and almost curse the land in which I have pitched my tent; let us
talk of it no more'.
This command was literally obeyed. They did talk no more of Jonathan
Jefferson Whitlaw, his occupation, or his character.
Nor did Jonathan Jefferson, on his side, talk much of them. It was not
in words that the feelings produced by Karl's treatment of him
evaporated; but deep, deep within his heart of hearts did he lay up the
insult he had received. He knew, he saw, he heard, he felt, - ay and he
understood it all. Neither his egregious vanity, his prosperous
ambition, the luxury in which he already lived, and his towering hopes
for the future, could so far blind, as to make him doubt for an instant
that Karl, the German boor, scorned and reviled him, - that he had
snatched his sister from his sight as too pure and holy for his eyes,
and then had dared to look upon him as he would look upon a negro.
There had been mutual scorn, dislike, and avoidance between them
before, but now there was something approaching to hatred in the breast
of both; and in that of Whitlaw, a deeply-sworn promise of revenge that
he was not very likely to forget.
But to no human being did he breathe a word of the offence he had
received, or of the rich atonement which it was his purpose to require
when the fitting hour should come. He answered with apparent
indifference to his aunt's observations on Lotte's running away; but
either to avoid the repetition of them, or from some other reason, it
was many months before he again found leisure to leave his duties at
Paradise Plantation in order to visit Mount Etna.
With Colonel Dart his importance appeared to increase daily. No person,
indeed, could be better fitted for an employment than was Jonathan
Jefferson for that which the planter had entrusted to him. He had
nothing to do with superintending the fulfilment of the negroes' talks;
that was the duty of the different overseers, one of whom was attached
to every separate gang. The large estate of Colonel Dart grew sugar,
cotton, and rice; and, as the cultivation of each of these articles
required a different kind of labour, and even a different species of
physical power in those employed upon it, the slaves were as distincly
divided as if they had belonged to different proprietors; even the huts
in which they dwell were grouped in widely-distant parts of the
property, in that Paradise Plantation could boast of three distinct
negro villages. There were but two things which belonged to them all in
common; these were, Colonel Dart, who was their general master, and
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, who was their general spy.
The manner in which the business belonging to the latter office was
performed might well propitiate the favour of Colonel Dart. The
employment was was congenial to the spirit of the employed, and was
executed with intelligence, real, and unwearying perseverance. The task
was moreover by no means an easy one. To watch the execution of a given
portion of labour in a given time, and to spur the languid spirit or
the failing strength of a suffering wretch to its performance, may
require an active and unshrinking agent; but his occupation is at least
easily comprehended, and requires no faculties and no qualities which
may not readily be found amongst the white population of a
slave-holding
country. Not so the employment entrusted to Jonathan Jefferson: to
execute it with success, demanded great readiness, tact, presence
of mind, and, above all things, most consummate cunning. It was his
custom, from the hour the nature of his employment was first explained
to him, to assume the appearance of being occupied by a variety of
duties, all very naturally belonging to the situation of a confidential
clerk. Thus, he would sometimes be seen riding through the grounds with
an apparatus for measuring trees: then it would be evident that it was
making a map of the estate upon which he was intent. At one time the
construction of every separate hut occupied so minute an
attention, that each village took several weeks to be examined and set
to rights; at another, the mode of cooking the negro food demanded his
peculiar care, - and this also kept him long employed upon the interior
of the huts.Then again his duty took him into the fields, and the
drains and ditches became the objects of his most persevering
examination. On all these occasions he had from time to time need
of the assistance of such negroes, whether men, women, or children, as
were within his reach; and in this manner he became personally
acquainted with every slave on the estate before he had been employed
upon it a year. For a long time these various pretences answered
perfectly, - as far, at least, as leading the negroes to believe that
his ostensible was his real business among them. But though for a while
he succeeded in this, he failed totally and altogether in obtaining in
any single quarter the slightest approach to confidence from the wary
slaves; nor could he by any means contrive to learn aught respecting
them beyond what his eyes enabled him to perceive. His reports
therefore were for a long time confined to the statement of a greater
or less degree of cleanliness, industry, and the like; but as to how
much or how little each sable victim knew of what was passing beyong
the limits of Paradise Plantation - whether the attempts making in
various quarters to ameliorate their condition have been in any degree
made known to them, was what he found it utterly beyond the reach of
all
the arts he could make use of to discover.
It was quite impossible to doubt either the intelligence or zeal of his
confidential agent, and therefore Colonel Dart neither expressed nor
indeed felt anything approaching to dissatisfaction at the abortive
result of his endeavours to obtain information on these very important
points; he only wished him to go on as he had begun, kindly encouraging
the young man to persevere notwithstanding his want of success, by
observing that if so much cleverness and ingenuity failed of
discovering
the mischief he feared, he should soon have the comfort of believing
that it did not exist at all.
Jonathan himself, however, was not quite of this opinion. He had more
than once fancied that he had heard a voice reading or praying in his
stealthy approaches to some of the more distant huts; but not sooner
had the murmur reach him than it ceased, - clearly proving that, if
indeed the sound itself were not imaginary, some person was on the
watch to guard against surprise. On every occasion where this had
occurred, he uniformly found, on entering the premises, that the
persons occupying them were sedulously employed in their laboruous
household duties, and that not the slightest trace could be discovered
of their having been engaged in any other.
Young Whitlaw knew his patron too well to venture upon rousing his
terrors by what might be so purely imaginary; he knew that he should
probably be himself the greatest sufferer were he to make a statement
which he could in no way substantiate, and he therefore continued to
report the total absence of every appearance of religious mutiny (as
the breaking in of a ray of light upon these unhappy beings is
designated), determined at the same time to mark well the spots whence
he had fancied the forbidden sounds to have proceeded, and to omit no
possible means of ascertaining whether they were real or not.
Shortly after he had made up his mind not to mention his suspicions to
Colonel Dart till he had more assured grounds for them, it chanced that
on two following evenings the same species of measured murmur struck
his ear as he approached the remotest hut on a cotton plantation which
was skirted on two sides by forest. As before, the sound ceased as he
made another step in advance after hearing it; but in both cases he
found on entering the hut a young negress, who, though in the act of
very busily washing linen, had, as he conceived, an air of hurry and
confusion.
She was a singularly handsome girl, who had more than once attracted
his attention in the fields; and he now attempted to make a sort of
toying acquaintance with her, by remarking the roundness of her arms,
displayed as they were, nearly to the shoulder, for the convenience of
her occupation.
It is singular that the only evidence his ready wit could discern to
confirm his suspicions that this young negress had been guilty of
pronouncing, or at least of listening to a prayer, was found in the
peculiarly sweet and innocent expression of her countenance. Had an
individual who felt and acknowledged the effect of religion come to
exactly the same conclusion, there would certainly have been nothing
extraordinary in it; but that Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, who till
eleven years of age had never entered a church or chapel of any kind,
and who, excepting from occasional phrases from poor Clio, doubtful and
mystical from inevitable ignorance, had scarcely heard the name of God
till he was taught by his patron to watch for its being pronounced by a
slave as an overt act of mutiny - that he should, in a countenance
expressive of the purest candour and most ingenuous modesty, see
something which forcibly suggested the idea that she had been taught
the worship of a Christian, is remarkable and shows pretty plainly,
despite the severity used towards them what the general effect left on
the minds of slave-holders must have been by those who had been found
guilty of listening to religious instruction.
Young Whitlaw looked in that innocent young face, and instantly decided
upon the means he would take to learn what was passing in her heart.
The fearfully demoralizing effects produced among the female slaves by
the unlimited power of those placed in authority over them, together
with the dreadful penalties attached to every species of disobedience,
is well known to all who are in any degree acquainted with the fearful
statistics of a large negro population. So deep and so general is the
degradation of character consequent upon vices committed, not from
weakness, but from the most inevitable and hateful necessity, that the
miserable victims cease at last to be conscious of shame, though awake
to suffering; and it is only where the undaunted courage of some
wandering preacher of the Gospel has taught them to believe that they
are accountable to a Being superior to their owner, and that, beyond
the wretched world that holds them now, there is a happier region for
all who deserve to enter it - except where doctrines such as these have
been taught and learned, the grossest sensuality is deemed no sin.
Not such, however, was the condition of Phebe, the innocent being who
now stood within the grasp of young Whitlaw. Her mother, herself, and
two young sisters, had been purchased by Colonel Dart, about twelve
months before, from a dealer who got them at the auction of a
bankrupt's effects in a State which bordered on Ohio. There is much
difficulty in guarding slaves effectually from the approach of
instruction when they are situated near a free State. The free negroes
themselves are often the means of enlightening to a certain degree
their less happy brethren; and there are few free States in which some
individuals may not be found who will gladly seize every opportunity
within their reach from the spiritual benefit of the miserable race
whose condition they feel to be their greatest misfortune, as it is the
greatest disgrace, of their country.
Phebe and her family had been as fortunate in their former situation in
Kentucky as they were now in every way the reverse; and a heavy
addition in the case of the poor girl to the misery produced by this
change of masters, was an attachment to one of her own race as sincere
and devoted as ever glowed in the heart of a woman. This lover, who was
to have become her husband in the course of a few months, was bought by
another.
Till Phebe was carried away from Kentucky, she had no more idea of
what the real evils of her condition were than those have who reason
upon the institution of slavery from the bosom of freedom, and judging
by some (perhaps) well-authenticated history of the happiness of a
virtuous negro under the protection of a virtuous master, conceive that
though, like all other human institutions, it may be liable to abuse,
yet still that it is upon the whole an arrangment which admits of much
mutual benefit to the parties.
There are, I believe, many who honestly and conscientiously conceive
this to be the case; and that it MAY have been so in
individual
instances cannot be doubted: but this ought not in the slightest degree
to influence the general question. The principle - the fearful,
terrible, unholy principle is still the same; and wherever it is
admitted and acted upon, there the social system is poisoned, and vice
and misery are the inevitable results.
But not only had Phebe and her family enjoyed the blessing of belonging
to a kind and considerate master - they had enjoyed also the still
higher advantage of being instructed, and well isntructed, as
responsible beings and as immortal Christians.
A story is but ill constructed when the relator is obliged to
retrograde, yet it is sometimes very difficult to avoid it; and I
believe it will be impossible to give the reader a necessary insight
into the character of some of the personages the most important in my
story, without referring to events which had passed before the time it
comprises had begun.
In order, however, to keep the two periods as may be, my retrospect
shall have a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER X
t the
distance of about ten miles from Lexington in the State of Kentucky,
is, or rather was, a fine arable and pasture farm, the neat and careful
cultivation of which might have reminded a European of the fertile
fields of England.
Henry Bligh, the proprietor, though he employed slaves both as indoor
and outdoor servants, detested the system, and scrupled not, though at
the risk of bringing upon himself the ill-will of many, to declare both
publicly and privately, that the union of the States would never be
securely cemented till they were all governed by equal laws, and till
every human being who drew breath upon their soil might lift his voice
to heaven and say, 'I am an American, and therefore I am free'.
But the beautiful spot Henry Bligh inhabited was his own, - it had,
too, been his father's; it was his own birth-place, and that of his
children; and therefore, instead of seeking an abode where slavery was
not, he contented himself with remaining and doing all the good in his
power where it was.
A motherless son and daughter constituted his whole family, and for
many years they and their negroes continued to inhabit 'Beechtree Farm'
without the relative situation of either party being a source of
discomfort to the other.
Among several particularities in the character of Henry Bligh, was an
aversness to letting his children quit his own house and his own care.
He was himself a man of literary habits and extensive reading; and
under
his eye, and aided solely by his instructions, Edward and Lucy Bligh
acquired more general information and more studious habits than are
often found even in the more polished parts of the Union.
It was a consciousness of this, and of the utter unfitness of both son
and daughter either to increase the property he should leave them, or
to enjoy life with less of easy indifference to daily expense than he
had accustomed them to, which made him listen to the proposals of an
acquaintance at Lexington for rapidly increasing his fortune by placing
a small sum of ready money which he possessed in a newly-established
banking concern.
The bank failed, and Henry Bligh was completely ruined. His ignorance
of business had led him to conceive that the six thousand dollars he
had
placed in the bank was all he risked; but his name was in the firm, and
house, lands, stock, and furniture, were all seized and sold by
auction, towards clearing the large demands of the creditors.
A misfortune such as this might weigh down the spirits of any man; but
poor Bligh was singularly ill calculated to support it. He, and his two
pure-minded, intellectual, but very helpless children, were left
utterly and literally destitute; and it was only by the sale of some
articles of wearing apparel which they were permitted to retain, that
their existence was for some time supported.
The only expedient which suggested itself to Edward by which he might
hope to maintain his father and sister, was the opening a day-school in
the populous village near which they had lived. By the aid of a
neighbour who lent him a ruinous barn for the purpose, he so far
succeeded as to be spared the agony of seeing his broken-hearted father
and delicate sister actually want bread. But the exertion and fatigue
which achieved this were overwhelming, and the objects of his care saw
the young cheek fade and the bright eye grow dim under the irksome and
unwonted toil. Poor Lucy saw it, and determined to divide the labour.
Without consulting either father or brother, whose principal occupation
and delight had been to guard her from every care and every sorrow, she
stole from the corner of their shed in which her father and herself sat
apart during the hours of Edward's labour, and passing, for the first
time since she left her home, though the long village street, she
called at every house, begging permission to instruct the girls at a
price so low that avarice was tempted, - and in a voice so sweet, and
yet so sad, that few ears could listen to it unmoved.
The consequence was, that on the following Monday, Lucy's side of the
barn held nearly as many pupils as Edward's.
There was much to rejoice at in this, - and perhaps they did rejoice.
But the arragnement necessarily left the unhappy father more alone;
and whether it were that his spirits failed the more completely from
this circumstance, or that his cup was full and he could bear nor more,
certain it is that he declined daily and hourly from that time, and in
less than in three months was attended to the grave by his unhappy
orphans.
It had long been Edward's intention to enter the church; but, though
his father never opposed it, the putting his wish in execution had been
delayed from the reluctance which Mr Bligh felt to part with him for
the period necessary for the probationary studies which must precede
the taking orders.
This most unfortunate delay left him totally without profession or
resource of any kind; and with a sister who was dearer to him than his
own life, and whose habits were those rather of refinement than of
usefulness, he had now to seek bread and shelter for both, with an
aching heart and weakened health.
It is difficult to imagine consultations for the future between two
young people, in which there was less of hope and more of despondency
than those of Edward and Lucy Bligh. The world was before them, but it
was a blank. They each felt conscious of superior powers, but more
deeply conscious still of their utter incapacity to turn them to
account. Lucy, though thoroughly well-read, and with information
equally professed and extensive, had nevertheless no accomplishments by
the teaching which she might hope to gain the means of existence. Who
would pay her for her love of Pascal, her familiarity with Dante, or
her enthusiasm for Shakespeare?
'Would I could work at any useful trade, dear Edward!? she said, after
they had canvassed the improbability that any one should think her
qualified for the situation of Governess. 'I am still young enough to
turn my thoughts away from all that has hitherto engrossed them, and to
take interest in a new manner of existence; but the difficulty is to
find out some handcraft of which I am capable'.
'Yes, Lucy, you have proved that you can submit to toil', replied her
brother. 'There are few occupations I should conceive so wearing to the
heart and soul as teaching children whse intellects have never been
awakened beyond the yearning to have their animal wants supplied; -
Lucy, it is dreadful!'
'Let us not think of it; it is over for a week or two,' replied his
sister. 'To-morrow is Sunday, Edward, and we will try to fancy that we
are not - as we are. But why is it, Edward, that the task of
instruction is now so terrible, when I used to take such extreme
pleasure in teaching poor black Phebe? Is it possible that I am so
wicked as to find delight in what was merely a matter of will or whim,
and that the same thing shall become hateful to me as soon as it is my
duty to do it?'
'Do not treat yourself with so great injustice, my poor girl. The
teaching Phebe was a task that might have given pleasure to the most
refined and intellectual person living. Her docility, her gentleness,
her intelligence, her piety, and her warm gratitude, made the office of
her instructor perfectly delightful. You surely cannot compare that to
the unspeakable fatigue of the occupation in which we are now engaged?'
'No, certainly, Edward, it resembles it in no way, and I am glad that
you deem it is no wickedness of mine which leads me to think so. Poor
Phebe! - I wish I knew where and how she was. The seeing the poor,
faithful creatures we had endeavoured to make so happy round us
scattered about over the Union just as chance might decide, was not one
of the least painful circumstances attending our sad downfall - And
Caesar, too, - the gay, kind-hearted, generous Caesar! - I would do
much to know their destiny. Should they have been parted, their misery
must be great indeed, for never did two young creatures love more
tenderly.'
She ceased; but it was some minutes before Edward answered her. At
length he said, 'Lucy, the utter destitution of my position has
sometimes suggested thoughts that, wild as I know they must appear to
you, would yet have in them a world of consolation, were it not - But I
will not leave you, Lucy - '
'Leave me!' exclaimed the poor girl, turning first pale, and then red,
- 'leave me, brother! - Oh! no, you will not do that - it is
impossible!'
'It is impossible, dearest, - I do not think of it; but were you placed
where I could believe that you were safe and happy, I have quite
decided what my destiny should be'.
'Will you not tell me, Edward?'
'Yes, my love, I will, for the subject is much in my thoughts, and it
will be a pleasure to me to talk to you of it. But fancy not that I
think of putting it in execution: it is but one of those dreams with
which the unhappy, I believe, often solace existence.'
'Let me then dream with you,' said his sister. 'If it be a solace, let
me share it'.
'You shall; but take care that you do not laugh at me. You know, Lucy,
what were my father's opnions respecting slavery. You know, I think,
that he had amongst his books nearly every publication of every land
which treated of the subject; but perhaps you do not know the deep, the
engrossing interest which this subject excited in me?'
'Your reading was so general', replied his sister, 'that I certainly
did not remark that these publications occupied you particularly'.
'They occupied me too intensely to permit my talking of them. I feared
to be deemed an enthusiast on a subject to which I would willingly have
brought profitable and efficient wisdom at the cost of half my life.
The point on which my meditations turned by day and by night, was less
the personal bondage of the negro race, than the brute ignorance in
which their masters permit them to remain; an ignorance which in a
thousand - ay, in a hundred thousand instances - prevents the wretched
victims of our fRightful laws from knowing good from evil. Had our
condition remained for a few weeks longer unchanged, Lucy, I was
determined to have petitioned my father for immediate leave to obtain
ordination, and then to have passed my life in journeying through the
regions where this plague-spot of our country is the darkest, in the
hope that under the sanction of my sacred calling I might awaken some
of these unfortunates to a consciousness of their immortality. This
hope
is passed away, like every other that embellished that period of our
existence; yet still my spirit seems to bear me perpetually to those
scenes of misery with the description of which I have become familiar,
and hopeless and helpless as I am myself, I still cannot help believing
that, were I at liberty to wander forth among them, I might lead many
an ignorant but innocent spirit to hold commune with HIM
who is not
less the God of the black man than of the white. This, Lucy, is what I
would attempt, were not not my first and dearest duty to watch over
you'.
'And were it not that you lack all means for such an enterprise,
Edward, and would do so no less if I lay in the grave-yard beside our
father, - were it not for this, I might be still more wretched than I
am, from knowing that I am a restraint upon you. Had we wherewithal to
sustain life as we journeyed, I would not be your hindrance, brother,
but your aid. Could I but meet such pupils as my poor Phebe, I should
never be weary of teaching'.
All this seemed at the time but idle talk; but accident ripened the
thoughts that were then dropped, and much that deeply affected the
destinies of the brother and sister resulted from it.
They both pursued their labours in the village school they had
instituted, successfully, though wearily, and even found that they were
enabled to gain more than they required from their daily support. Their
uncomplaining industry, and the conscientious manner in which they
performed the duties they had undertaken, brought them all the
patronage and all the assistance which the poor neighbourhood could
give; and it is probable that they might long have continued in the
same occupation, had not the arrival of the following letter awakened
feelings which led tem to a different and much less tranquil mode of
ife.
The letter was from black Phebe, the affectionately remembered slave
and pupil of Lucy Bligh.
HONOURED LADY
AND MISTRESS,
Grief and sorrow are at my heart. I wish our God had not made it
his command that we must not die and go to him, when sufferings come
too
much to bear. I do not think that, or our kind master, or our Master
Edward, know anything at all about what being a slave means in this
fearful country near Natchez. It means labour till strength fails -
stripes till the blood runs down - wickedness till God must turn away
his face - and shame, and suffering, and more, till life seems worse,
much worse than death.
Dear and honoured mistress, I write to ask if you can tell me
where my promised husband is. O, my poor Caesar! - if he could see me,
and all that is about me! Perhaps Caesar is dead. I
sometimes think he must be; but if I knew it, I think dear honoured
mistress, I should die, too, without offending God,
The letter then proceeded at greater length than it is necessary for
the reader to follow, to describe the state of Colonel Dart's slaves -
their ignorance, their vice, and their sufferings - and concluded by
saying, that if the unhappy writer heard nothing as to the fate of her
lover, or concerning the protestors, the friends, and instructors of
her youth, she thought these would prove to be her dying words, for
that she felt her heart sinking within her, and trusted that God would
take her to his mercy before she had suffered much more.
How poor Phebe had contrived to convey her melancholy letter to the
post remained a mystery; but its effect upon her former msitress proved
that she had not overrated the interest felt for her by those from whom
she had been so cruelly torn. Lucy wept over it bitterly, and when she
put it into her brother's hand, she said with a feeling of enthusiasm
almost equal to his own, 'Edward! if we had one hundred dollars in the
world, I should say that, useless and unconnected with the world as we
are, we should do well to set forth together on a pilgrimage to the
wretched land where our poor Phebe and her fellow-suffereers languish.
We should have no power to redeem them from their worse than Egyptian
bondage; but might we not be enabled to throw such a light upon the
everlasting future as might teach them to feel with less bitterness the
miseries of the dreadful but passing hours of the present?'
Lucy's soft eyes were lighted up with an energy and earnestness that
her brother had never seen in them before. He took Phebe's letter, and
having perused it attentively, returned it in silence, and left the
little room, which by degrees he had converted into a decent shelter.
In a few minutes he returned, bearing in his hand a small box, which he
opened, and poured the contents into his sister's lap.
'Here are forty dollars, Lucy', he said, 'obtained partly by the sale
of linen which was no longer fit for my use, and partly by the little
weekly savings we have made since my poor father's death. This sum is
already sufficient to convey us to Natchez, and to support us in the
manner in which we now live for several months. I do believe, my
sister, that we are called to this work. The singular education
we have received, and the still more singular isolation of our
condition, seems to point us out as belonging to those, who having no
worldly ties to withold them should go forth amongst the wretched and
the ignorant to pour the balm of God's word into their hearts. While I
thought you, Lucy, unequal to the task, I put the hope of performing it
far from me, for I deemed that my first duty was to cherish and protect
my orphan sister; but now - now that I read in your eyes the same
devotion to this cause which I feel at my own heart, shall I from any
cowardly misgivings of your strength or my own, attempt to check your
holy zeal? Forbid it, Heaven! - I am ready, Lucy. Let us finish the
labours of the week, dispose of the trifles we have collected round us
and armed with the courage which such a cause should give, let us set
forth for the plantations of Louisiana. Perhaps we may again find
bread,
by collecting a school among the white settlers in the forest behind
Natchez. But this is a secondary consideration - Lucy, have you courage
to do this?'
It would be difficult to analyze the feelings of Lucy Bligh as she
listened to this proposal. What she had uttered iin the first warmth of
her feelings on reading the melancholy statement of the poor slave,
though as perfect in truth as her own spotless heart, was nevertheless
spoken with such a conviction that the scheme she mentioned was
impracticable, that her mind had in fact never contemplated the dangers
and difficulties it must involve. But now that it was at once brought
before her as a thing to be done, according to her judgment and her
will, she trembled.
'If indeed, my brother, you deem this great enterprise possible, and
our duty, I will follow you in it, body and soul, as long as nature
shall give me strength to do so'.
It was thus that, after a few moments' delay, Lucy replied to the
unexpected proposal; and if the fervour of her consent was tempered by
a shade of timidity, her brother saw it not. The most earnest wish of
his heart was about to be fulfilled; enthusiasm had taken the place of
all ordinary considerations of prudence, and even the dangers and
difficulties which his sister must inevitably encounter appeared to his
exalted feelings only a ray the more in the crown of glory they were
about to win.
* * * * *
Their walk to the banks of the Ohio, their embarkation on board a
steam-boat, the various sufferings of the delicate Lucy during her
deck-passage of many days, and the changeful feelings of her brother,
wavering between the tenderness of a man and the sternness of a martyr,
must be passed by without any detailed description; and the reader must
rest contented with knowing that at the distance of one month from the
period of the conversation I have last recorded, the brother and sister
had established themselves in a small room, with a loft over it, at an
obscure clearing in the forest to the north-east of Natchez, which made
part of the premises of a poor back-woodsman, who thankfully restricted
his family to the use of half their dwelling, for the consideration of
twenty-five cents per week, as the rent of the remainder.
The curiosity of their host and his wife was satisfied or baffled
by being informed that they were an orphan brother and sister
desirous of gaining a living by instructing the children of the
neighbouring settlers. As this statement was strictly true, it was
threatened with no danger from any discovery; and as their scholars
were
not at first very numerous, the long rambles which Edward took in the
forest and neighbourhood attracted neither attention nor inquiry.
In a country so thickly peopled with slaves as Natchez and its
vicinity, it was but too easy for the enthusiastic and persevering
Edward Bligh to discover a multitude of human beings totally deficient
in that knowledge which it was the sole passion of his young heart to
spread abroad. And never did a hope more holy, an ambition more
sublime, engross the soul of man. Remote as is good from evil, was the
principle which sent him forth, thus self-elected and self-devoted, to
raise the poor crushed victims of an infernal tyranny from the state of
groveling ignorance to which they were chained by the well-calculating
masters, from that which swells with most unrighteous vanity the hearts
of many among ourselves, inclined to separate from the established
faith in which they were educated, and to hold themselves apart, as
chosen saints and apostles of another.
As well might a philanthropist labouring in a desert where no abler
hand could be found to minister relief to te sick and suffering - as
well might such a man be compared to the audacious quack who, thrusting
instructed science aside, claims reverence for his own daring
ignorance, as Edward Bligh to the self-seeking fanatics who canker our
establishment.
It is true, indeed, that the praise justly due to his excellent
intentions cannot be as fully accorded to his prudence. His judgment
was unquestionable shaken by the fervour of his zeal, or he would not
have urged his young sister to an enterpise so pregnant with difficulty
and danger. But this chapter is a retrospect, and therefore need not
forestall the future.
About two months before the domiciliary visit of young Whitlaw to the
hut of Phebe's mother, Lucy and Edward Bligh had found means to see and
converse with their former dependants. But terror at the idea of being
discovered to hold intercourse with strangers almost conquered the
delight with which the affectionate Phebe greeted her beloved mistress,
and nearly all their subsequent meetings had been held at dead of night
in the depth of the forest which divided the boundary of Colonel Dart's
plantation from the dwelling which sheltered the Blighs.
Phebe's hut was very favourably situated for her stealing to these
midnight meetings. A clear spring which rose near the verge of the
woods had led to the erection a washing-house beside it: in this house
Phebe and her mother had been recently placed as laundresses to a part
of the establishment, and as no other dwelling was within sight, the
grateful and affectionate girl ran little risk of discovery when
creeping from her pallet into the forest, and returning to it again
before sun-rise.
Before leaving Kentucky, Edward Bligh ascertained from the autioneer
who sold his father's slaves, that Caesar had become the property of a
manufacturer of New Orleans; intelligence which caused as great joy to
Phebe, as the knowledge that the loved one was living next door might
have done to a less despairing mistress. Having satisfied the poor girl
on this point, Edward proceeded to explain to her the hopes which had
brought him to the scene her letter described as so full of misery and
sin. The dialogue which followed this communication may throw some
light on the circumstances which took place afterwards.
' - I hope, Phebe,' said Edward, 'that you will be able to put me in
the way of awakening your miserable fellow-labourers to a sense of
their own importance in the sight of Heaven, and to the blessed hopes
of happiness in a life to come'.
'Ah! dear master Edward!' replied Phebe, 'the poor black souls think
only but of their bodies in this world, and their stripes and their
labour and their bad food when the overseer is angry. They will not
believe that there is a good God in heaven watching to make it all up
to them by-and-by.'
'Have you never told them this, Phebe?'
'When I first came, Master Edward, and heard them speak, and saw them
do, like being having no souls for the life that is to be after this is
over, and when I thought of Caesar, I prayed on my knees every night,
when all the world was sleeping, except Phebe - I prayed to God to let
me die -'
'Phebe!' interrupted Edward somewhat sternly.
'Master Edward! - don't think me grown bad! - I know it was a sin, I
found it out myself that I had no church to go to, no good master to
tell me what was right, no Bible to read - I found it out in my own
heart, and then I prayed to God to forgive me, and then I strove to do
good to those lower, and more wretched than myself, but they could not
understand one word I said'.
'Then it is more necessary, Phebe, that we should endeavour to instruct
them. Did they receive kindly what you said to them?'
'Alas! no, Master Edward, I would not have your ears hears, and still
less my dear Miss Lucy's, the terrible words and deeds spoken and done
here. The negroes of this country are very miserable - but they are
very wicked, too.'
' - Perhaps it is not their fault, Phebe,' said Lucy, 'perhaps they
might be easily reclaimed, if one could be found, who, without being a
slave himself, could feel for slaves. Do you not think they would
listen
to Edward?'
'And where could they listen to him, Miss Lucy? - In the grounds? -
Why, if they did not but stop to raise their eyes to him, the lash
would
be on their backs. And think you Master Edward himself would be safe?
No! no! you must not peril your precious life, Master Edward, for such
as we are. Do you not know that the planters have sworn together to
take vengeance on any one who should only be caught teaching a negro to
read? And how much more dreadful vengeance would they take on any who
should dare to say that the soul of a black man is like the soul of a
white one! - You must not think of it, Master Edward, - your life would
pay for it.'
'And my life shall pay for it, Phebe, if such be the will of Heaven'
replied the enthusiast. 'Do not throw difficulties in my way, my good
girl, by endeavouring to terrify my sister. I am here to preach the
doctrine of hope and salvation to the despairing slaves, and neither
hardships, nor sufferings, nor danger, nor threatenings - no, nor death
itself, shall appal me. So help me Heaven as I keep my word!'
The solemn silence of the night as Edward Bligh offered these words in
the deep still voice of profound emotion added to their effect, The
mood shed, through the light boughs of the locust trees under which
they walked, a soft pale light on the uplifted face of the young man,
which seemed to give an unearthoy expression to his countenance. He
raised his hat reverently from his brow as he spoke, the cool
night-breeze blew the dark curls from his forehead, and as he raised
his eyes
to heaven, he might have furnished the finest model for a
representation of youthful piety that ever blessed a painter.
Phebe gazed at him with reverence, and suddenly dropping on her knees,
excalimed, 'Then may Heaven help your work, Master Edward! And Phebe
would die, too, rather than hinder it; but do not let them see you,
Master Edward - the master is -'
'It matters not, Phebe, what he is', returned Edward. 'But kneel not to
me, poor child; kneel before the throne of God, and pray for power to
help me to perform the task he sets me. You may do it, Phebe, - You may
do much to help me.'
'Tell me what it is, and I will do it', replied the girl, 'though they
should lash me into rags for it. What is it I can do, Master Edward?'
Edward Bligh did not reply immediately. Perhaps some feeling of doubt
and dread as to the peril to which the poor slave would be exposed if
discovered to be his agent kept him awhile in suspense; but the impulse
that urged him onward in defiance of every danger which might befall
himself and his still dearer sister, soon drove before it whatever
reluctance this thought might have created; he paused in his walk, and
the two young girls who were on each side of him pausing likewise,
looked up into his young and beautiful countenance as if they were to
read their destiny there.
'It is no light and easy task, Phebe, to which Heaven has called us.
The circumstances of our lives, though we are still very young, have
been so strangely ordered that we cannot but see the hand of God in it.
An immediate Providence is surely visible in the arrangment of that
series of events which, contrary to all human calculations, has
brought us thus together on the spot where, operhaps, beyond all others
on earth, we may hope to serve the cause for which the Son
of the Most High gave his own sacred blood. In this belief we shall
find
hope, strength, long-suffering, and courage, unto the end. Have you
this belief, Phebe?'
'I do believe that you, Master Edward, may have been chosen by the wise
God to teach and to save poor negroes. But I! - Oh, no! that would be
to think myself equal to you and to Miss Lucy. But I do not want such a
thought as that to make me faithful. Tell me what to do; and if I do it
not, then scorn the poor black girl, even as she is scorned by all
other white men. What shall I do, Master Edward?'
'First, Phebe', replied Edward, 'endeavour to ascertain with certainty
who among the numerous slaves who are your fellow-labourers on the
estate to which you belong, are the most likely to listen to the word
of God. Let me and my sister know their names, and in what quarter they
are employed. It will then be necessary, before we begin our work, to
arrange the time and place where, with the least danger to themselves,
they may be able to meet and listen to us. When this is done, we must
take measures to receive them. You thus perceive, my good Phebe, that
your services will be most essential to us'.
Phebe's only reply was again dropping on her knees, and kissing the
ground that his advancing step would press - but she spoke not a single
word. Then, rising to her feet, she resumed her place beside him; but
as she did so, a deep sigh smote on the ear of Lucy.
'You sigh, Phebe!' said her former mistress kindly. 'Be candid with us
-
conceal nothing! - Tell me why is it that you sigh thus heavily? -
Something is on your mind, Phebe. You fear to do what Edward asks of
you'.
'Miss Lucy!' said the girl, sublimely standing still, 'thanks to your
blessed teaching, I know much - for a poor black girl, I know very
much, and the God of all knowledge reward you for it. But still my mind
is dark compared to yours; and if I sigh, it is because I cannot see -
not so clearly as I ought to see - beyond the stripes and chains, and
tortures that must come upon me. Tell me, dear mistress, dear master -
tell me, when we are dead, when we have died for this business we have
got to do, will not both of you be great and powerful and high and
happy - very happy in heaven?'
'Die for it, Phebe!' exclaimed Lucy trembling, - 'Die for it? - Surely
the reading of the Bible to such of the poor slaves as wish to hear it
can endanger the life of no one'.
'You are terrified, my poor girl,' said Edward, gently; 'do not be
afraid to tell me so. You fear the overseer's lash - is it not so? I
will not involve you in the business, Phebe; I will myself make
acquaintance from time to time among the slaves when they are least
watched - and I will only seek the aid of Heaven'.
The black girl burst into tears.
'Oh! could I speak as you speak, Master Edward,' she said, - 'could I
know how to show what is in my heart, - you would not think that it was
the overseer's lash, nor any other thing that could harm me, that made
me fear to help you in this. But I know one thing, one dreadful thing
better than you do - I know that to teach a slave will bring down
vengeance on Miss Lucy and on you; I know it, and my blood runs cold as
I look at you both, with the soft, quiet moonlight that seems full of
God's own goodness shining on you - when, perhaps, the next time it
comes round again it may light the wicked ones to look for you - and to
find you.'
Phebe ceased to speak, for tears choked her utterance, and neither of
her companions answered her. Edward was weighing solemnly and, as he
hoped, wisely, the purport of her words; and Lucy remained in anxious
expectation that he would answer them. But it was Phebe who again
spoke. She dashed the tears from her eyes, and said with firmness,
'Now, dear master - now, dear mistress, I have told you all, and never
more will Phebe speak a backward word concerning the good work. If you
die for it, happy and glorified will I be to die with you. I know two
slaves, Master Edward, that I think will listen to me at once; shall I
bring them just to these dark trees to-morrow night?' she said,
pointing to a group of ilex.
The young slave now spoke without faltering; she knew the danger they
were about to incur infinitely better than her hearers did. Of this she
was well aware, and the idea that it was her duty to tell them so, and
perhaps thereby to check their hopes, had made this conversation
terrible to her. But never did martyr give himself body and soul to the
work which he knew must bring him to the stake, more devotedly than did
black Phebe henceforward bind herself to this. Her last word of warning
was uttered.
If Edward Bligh had listened with doubt and dread to her predictions
for one short moment, it was infinitely more for the sake of his
beloved sister, and also of the poor slave herself, than from any
consideration touching his personal safety. When, therefore, Phebe's
last words seemed to urge him on, he caught them as if they were a
fresh awakening sent from heaven, and at once, and, as he hoped,
forever, shaking off the creeping sense of danger which had unnerved
him for an instant, he eagerly accepted the appointment, and then
dismissed her to her mother's hut with an ardent and affectionate
blessing; after which he carefully led back his trembling sister
through a narrow forest-path to her humble and anxious pillow. Their
walk was wholly silent, and being absorbed by thoughts which worked too
strongly within them to permit of conversation.
Edward's soul was wrapt into the highest state of enthusiasm. He now
felt himself launched on the career which he had so long and ardently
desired to pursue; while Lucy pondered heavily the words of fearful
foreboding to which the too well-instructed slave had given utterance.
After this statement, the reader will be at no loss to divine whose
voice it was which had from time to time reached the ear of young
Whitlaw in sounds which seemed to indicate reading and prayer; nor will
it be difficult for him to conceive with what feelings the wretched
Phebe listened to the licentious proposals of the man whose eye she
knew was open and watchful to discover what she would willingly have
given her life to hide.
With ingenuity inspired by affection, she had hitherto contrived
effectually to conceal the visits of Edward at two or three of the
remotest huts. His converts already amounted to fifty; and the more
numerous they became, the more difficult was it to guard against
surprise. But so ably had this young girl arranged the manner of their
meetings, which were never general except at dead of night and in the
thickest covert of the forest, that not all the watchfulness of Whitlaw
had hitherto enabled him to make any discovery. The voice he had heard
was indeed that of Edward Bligh; but his auditors at those times never
exceeded three or four, whom he deemed to be in want of especial
instruction; and on such occasions Phebe not only kept guard, but had
previously taken measures so effectually to ensure the timely retreat
of those assembled, as to have rendered the repeated interruptions of
Whitlaw perfectly harmless.
Her courage had therefore gradually increased; and the triumph of her
success, made up as it was of various feelings, amounted to a glowing
sense of happiness which lent lustre to her eyes and elasticity to
every
movement.
The unhappy girl probably owed the first notice and admiration of the
young libertine to this; and when persuaded that if instruction of any
kind were going on, Phebe must be engaged in it, he conceived the idea
of gaining her affections, and thus discovering her secret, a most
hateful union of passion and treachery took possession of his soul.
Fierce and frightful were the disappointment and the rage produced by
the wretched girl's silent but most eloquent abhorrence as she shrunk
from his hateful caresses; and horrible were the blasphemies which
burst from his young lips as he marked the appeal of her raised eyes to
heaven. Scorn and revilings succeeded to this words of blandishment,
and he at length left the hut, pronouncing in a tone that made her
heart sink within her - 'Slave and rebel! - Beware! - You shall be
taught to know your duty!'
CHAPTER XI
n all
former occasions, when Whitlaw had entered a cabin whence Phebe's
timely caution had previously dismissed either Edward or Lucy Bligh and
those met to listen to them, his departure from it had been a signal
for thanksgiving and joy; but now the poor girl sank on the floor of
her dwelling in an agony of terror and despair.
'Poor wench!' said her mother, turning her head from the tub at which
she was washing, Two large tears fell over her dark cheeks, but she
spoke not another word, or gave further token of sympathy or sorrow. A
slave may feel her heart swell with tenderness or with grief; but
beyond the more animal functions of giving life and nourishment, she
cannot show that she is a mother.
It had been arranged, and always carried into effect, that the time
occupied by the intruder in looking round the hut and questioning the
inhabitants should be employed by those who retreated from it in making
their escape into the woods, which were close upon every habitation
used for the prayer-meetings; and the consciousness that it would be no
easy task to find them, was a never-failing source of triumph and
delight to the negroes who remained to meet the puzzled eye of the
inquisitor. But now Phebe would have suffered the lash patiently, could
she by doing so have ensured a few minutes conversation with Lucy
Bligh. From her she was sure of a species of sympathy which it was
impossible that she should find from any one else, and she might give
her
counsel - most important counsel.
Black Phebe, from the first instant that Whitlaw gave her to understand
his licentious purpose, was as steadfastly and desperately determined
to resist it, as Rebecca to save herself from the Templar. There
appeared but two ways to effect this - death and flight. The former,
her simple but most devoted piety forbad; and for the second, the
difficulties which must accompany it made her brain feel dizzy as she
thought upon them. Her dear mistress and her master, as she ever called
Edward and Lucy Bligh, might suggest something to help her in this her
utmost need. But where were they? - Buried in thickets whose impervious
shelter had hitherto been her best consolation. She rose from her
abject posiiton, and leaving the cabin by the door which opened upon
the forest, she walked mournfully onward, with a sort of vague hope
that she might chance to fall upon the retreat of her friends; but ere
she had proceeded a hundred yards, her eye was caught by the moment of
several of the large and heavy leaves of a tuft of palmetoes which grew
beside the path. No breeze was stirring, and from the situation of the
plant, no very light breeze could have produced such movement as
she had seen. Her first idea was that a large snake might be concealed
beneath it; but a second glance showed a portion of the white dress in
which the Louisianian gentlemen indulge during the summer months.
Whitlaw was so dressed, and Phebe instantly divined that it was he who
lay couching there, probably in the hope of seeing her take the way by
which those whose voices he insisted upon it he had heard, had made
their escape.
This thought at once restored her presence of mind, for it recalled to
her recollection the danger of her friends. Without changing her
manner or her pace, she proceeded a little farther in the same
direction, and then stopping at the foot of a locust-tree fully exposed
to the view of whatever eyes might look forth from the shelter of the
palmetto, she sat down, as if, naturally enough, she wished to mediate
in solitude on the scene which had just occurred.
For many minutes she sat thus, without venturing again to look towards
the spot where, as she believed, her enemy lay in abmush; and it was at
length her ear, and not her eye, which again gave notice that some
living thing was indeed concealed behind the rich foliage. The sound,
however, was produced by a movement that no longer sought concealment;
an active jump and a few bounding steps brought the object of her
terror and her hatred to her side.
'Well, now, I expect you'll be more clever, my fine girl', he
began, 'now that we've got neither mother nor brats to watch us. I
guess it's a first chop bit of good luck for you having jest hit my
fancy'.
This speech was accmpanied by a repetition of the caresses he had
proffered in the hut.
Phebe slipped from his embrace, and standing at some distance from him,
said -
'When the white commands the black to labour, the black must obey; -
but when the white commands the black to love, it is only the wicked
who
make believe to do his bidding'.
'That's the slickest speech, Phebe, that ever I heard a nigger speak
since first I carried a white for 'em. Why, there isn't a copper to
choose between you and the play-actors at New Orlines. - But now, hear
me a spell. If you won't behave yourself as I would have you, and let
me see you jump for joy into the bargain, there shall no more skin be
left on your back than might serve the tailor for a pattern. - D'ye
hear that, you black she-nigger?'
The poor girl clasped her hands together, fixed her eyes upon the
ground, and replied not a word.
'You will run rusty, then, you darnation idiot?'
Phebe neither spoke nor moved.
'And how long, now, d'ye think I shall keep courting, you smut you?
Till everlasting, maybe: - but I expect somehow that our courting will
come to an end before either of us is much older - and I'll tell you
how
it shall be, blackamoor miss. You'll come to-night as the clock strikes
nine to Paradise Plantation, and ask for Mr Jonathan Whitlaw, the
confidential clerk. I'll take care you shall find him, and I'll take
care, too, that you shan't get the lash for being about. - Come to be
me d'ye see, at nine o'clock, and I'll give you a pair of ear-rings.
Stay away - that's all - jest stay away, and you shall have Bill
Johnson at your bed-side to-morrow morning with a new cat of first-rate
elegant cow-hide, and
we'll see how soon your dainty niggership will be fit to be about and
praying again'.
Saying these words, Whitlaw raised himself from the ground, on which he
had stretched himself, and walked off, leaving Phebe rather in a state
of meditation than of despair.
'If that be all', thought she, - 'if the lash be all I have to fear for
disobedience, let it come - I can bear it. But how shall I tell Miss
Lucy to keep away? - It must be done to-night.'
In pursuance of this resolution, Phebe left her mother's side at
midnight, and found her way through thickets of briars, with no better
light than the stars could give by darting a ray here and there through
the trees. But she knew her way well to Fox's clearing, and reached it,
a distance of nearly four miles, within an hour. The loft in which Lucy
Bligh lodged was also well known to her humble friend, and she
succeeded in waking both her and her brother with disturbing any other
inmate of the shanty.
It may be recorded as a proof of delicate and almost sublime affection
on the part of the poor slave, that she was almost as anxious to
conceal from her friends the knowledge of the corporeal suffering she
was to endure on the following morning, as to prevent her connexion
with them from being betrayed by their making a visit to her hut when
she could no longer be on the alert to guard against discovery. But to
achieve this, some skill and a little most innocent artifice were
necessary.
In truth, Phebe's spirits had been raised rather than depressed by the
farewell words of Whitlaw; for it appeared to her that she was now in
some sort the arbitrator of her own destiny, having the choice left her
of obeying his commands by attending the rendezvous he had given, or of
submitting to receive the lash on the morrow.
The hour of appointment having been long passed before she left her
mother's side, and no measures of coercion used to enforce her keeping
it, her heart felt lightened of an intolerable load: she believed the
caprice which noticed her to be as short-lived as it appeared to her
sudden, and shaking off, with a degree of firmness that might have
benefitted a heroine, the sick shudder which came over her as she
remembered the torture she was to endure in the morning, she opened her
communication to her wondering friends with composure, and almost with
cheerfulness.
'You are frightened to see me here, Miss Lucy? - and Master Edward,
too,
almost? - But all is safe, and all is well; only Master Edward must not
come to-morrow, nor dear Miss Lucy either - nor next day, nor the day
after - and perhaps - Oh, yes! - it will be best and safest not to come
at all till you see me here again some night to tell you.'
'How is this, Phebe?' said Edward gravely. 'You tell us that all is
safe and that all is well, and yet, that at this time, when our work is
prospering more than ever it did before, you tell us that our labour
must cease for many days - nay, longer, perhaps, longer than you can
say. How is this, Phebe? What does it mean?'
'Master Edward', answered Phebe with the deepest earnestness, 'trust to
your faithful slave. I would not ask you to remain away, but for the
safety of the good and holy cause you love so well. If you come before,
I tell you - I shall not be able to watch for you as I have done'.
'And why not, Phebe?' said Lucy, who with a woman's tact perceived in a
moment that there was something on the poor girl's mind which she did
not mean to reveal - 'Why not, Phebe? - Remember you are bound to
tell us everything, whether good or bad, that concerns the object for
which we are here: you must hide nothing from us, or how can we believe
you true?'
'Oh! Miss Lucy - But I do not think you should believe me false, let me
speak or not; so do not say so - dear, dear mistress, do not say that!'
'We do not, we cannot think you false,' said Edward; 'but perhaps you
take upon you to judge what is best, when, if you would conceal
nothing, I might form my own opinion in a manner more conformable to
the interest of the cause I serve, than you can do. - Why do you wish
us
to cease our visits, Phebe?'
'No, no! - not cease! Only wait, Master Edward, and I will tell you
why. The master's confidential clerk - '
Poor Phebe's breath seemed to fail her as she named him.
'What the man called Whitlaw? The same whose approach has so frequently
interrupted us? Does it appear that he knows of our visits?' inquired
Edward.
'That same man - it is of him, Master Edward, that we must beware. I
saw him hiding behind the palmetoes after you went tonight, and - and
he entered mother's house, and threatened to come again, and again: -
but if he finds nobody, nor nothing that he expects, why then he will
give over coming, and I will tell you, and all will be safe again.'
Edward mediated upon her words for some minutes before he answered her.
At length he said,
'Perhaps, Phebe, this caution may be altogether unnecessary; and, at
any rate, I cannot think it needful that I should abstain from visiting
any part of Colonel Dart's plantation because his clerk has entered
your mother's house. However, as you have hitherto shown no want either
of zeal or courage in this matter, I will comply with your wishes to a
certain extent: we will not approach the slave villages for two days.
This is Wednesday morning; to-day and to-morrow we will not come: but
if before Friday evening, after the working-hours are over and the
people have gone to bed, I do not see you here, Phebe, you must expect
that I shall venture to visit you'.
With this promise, as it was all she could obtain, the poor girl
retreated, and almost exhausted by agitation and fatigue, returned so
slowly through the forest that the first gleam of morning lighted her
steps as she approached her mother's hut. Nevertheless she stretched
herself on her pallet as she entered it, rather to prepare herself for
the torture she anticipated, than with any hope of refreshing her
exhausted strength by sleep.
Ere Edward and Lucy Bligh again separated after Phebe left them to
finish their night's repose, some few words were exchanged between them
indicative of the different feelings to which her visit had given birth.
'I fear, Lucy,' said the young apostle, 'that this poor girl wearies of
the task assigned her. It is much more evident to me that she earnestly
wishes to prevent our visits to the plantation, than that she has any
good reason for doing so'.
'You judge her wrongly, brother!' replied Lucy, with some warmth: 'I
feel so sure that she has cause, and good cause, too, for giving us
this
caution, that I rather suspect her of diffidence in not making her
remonstrance more authoritative, than of a falling off in zeal for
having made it at all'.
'Well, Lucy, we shall see. But at least remember that it is our bounden
duty to take nothing upon trust that can check our progress. I must
inquire, and judge for myself.'
'But at least promise that in doing so you will keep in mind the many
proofs our poor Phebe has given of devoted and faithful attachment -
remember this, Edward, and for my sake do nothing rashly. - Good night!'
'Good night, dear sister! I must not shrink from my duty - but whatever
caution is consistent with that, shall be used. - Good night, dear
Lucy.'
CHAPTER XII
espite the
terrible forebodings which harassed her spirits, itrresistible fatigue
closed the eyes of poor Phebe before she had stretched her limbs upon
her bed for five minutes; and though her last waking thought was that
in a short hour perhaps the lash of the overseer would be suspended
over her, she slept soundly.
She slept soundly, but not long. Hardly was the broad sun fairly
visible over the horizon, when her mother, who was already risen to
pursue her labour, was startled by the sound of approaching footsteps,
and stepped out into the drying-ground before the hut to discover who
it was that thus early could have business with her. The sight she
beheld caused her to turn back shuddering, and the exact truth
immediately flashed upon her mind. Two men were striding rapidly
towards her dwelling. The one in advance was Whitlaw; but though he was
not walking exactly side by side with his companion, he nevertheless
was conversing with him, and a loud ribald laugh showed them to be on
terms of easy freedom. The man who hung a step behind, was a fellow
named Johnson, perhaps the most detested overseer on the estate; and to
render his apearance there more unequivocally terrible, he bore aloft
in
his hand, flourishing it with all the gaiety of a spruce postboy, the
dreadful emblem of shame and anguish called a cow-hide cat.
The helpless mother could not for a moment doubt who was to be the
victim, or what the act of disobedience to be punished. Hastily going
to
the straw bed on which her two younger children lay sleeping, she
dragged them away, one in each hand, and retreating by the backdoor
into the forest, hurried onward among the bushes in the hope of placing
herself and the little ones beyond reach of hearing the groans which
she
knew would soon be wrung from the innocent being she left.
Let not the tender European mother turn with disgust from the apparent
selfishness of this retreat. Those only who have seen with their own
eyes how slavery acts upon the heart, can fairly judge the conduct of
slaves. They are, in truth, where the yoke is laid on heavily, hardly
to be considered as responsible for any act, or for any feeling. The
dogged quiescence of silent endurance which often gives to the negro as
aspect of brutal insensibility, may originate from a temper whose
firmness might have made a hero had the will been free; and poor Peggy,
when she hurried from the scene of her child's suffering, might have
carried with her an anguish the bitterness of which no mother blessed
with the power of protecting her offspring can conceive.
When Whitlaw and his official enter, Phebe was still asleep; the
fatigue and exhaustion of the preceding day pressed heavily upon her
senses, and it was not till the hand of the brutal young man had rudely
dragged away the rug which covered the bed, that she opened her eyes
and
beheld the hateful countenance that hung over her.
Heavy as her sleep had been, this sight chased it in an instant. She
attempted to spring from the bed, but Whitlaw's arm seized and threw
her back upon it.
'Soh! you are ready for us, my dainty one, are you? All your clothes on
because you expected company - hey?'
And again the fiendish pair laughed loud.
'But that's no go, Johnson,' continued the ferocious Whitlaw. 'We shall
be stumped outright it we attempt to lash her while she's wrapped up in
this fashion - she won't mind your cat a copper if we let her keep her
clothes one'.
'Then I expect, my young squire, that we must be after jest giving the
nigger the trouble to take 'em off. Be brisk, my beauty,' continued the
fellow, hitting her ams and legs with the handle of the instrument he
held: 'I'll smash you outright if you keep me waiting; I tell you that
to begin, for I've a deal of business to get through before sun-down'.
Phebe by a sudden movement sprang from the bed and stood on her foot
before them.
'Do not strip me!' she said, clasping her hands together with trembling
eagerness, - 'Do not strip me! Let me go to the rice-grounds instead!'
'Maybe we may pay you that compliment into the bargain, my lily; - you
have only got to be uproarious and obstinate enough, and I'll do you
all the favours in that line that your fancy can hit upon,' said
Whitlaw. 'But, jest to begin, you'll be so genteel as to oblige us by
stripping your top skin, that we may deal as well like with the
milk-white that we shall find under it'.
Even on Colonel Dart's plantation, Phebe had not yet been accustomed to
the lash; her quick intelligence and patient industry together had
enabled her so to fulfil her allotted tasks as almost entirely to
escape it; and never before had she been exposed to the degrading
ceremony to which she was so peremptorily commanded to submit. She
trembled violently, and felt so sick and giddy that she tottered
towards
the door in the hope of saving herself from fainting.
'Do you mean to try a run for it?' cried Johnson, looking at her
without moving, as a dog may be seen to watch a wounded hare, certain,
let it struggle as it may, that escape is impossible.
'I should like to see her at it', said Whitlaw. 'She's a neat little
craft for a nigger; and she'd skip handsome over them stumps yonder,
I'll engage for her. Go it, my beauty!' he continued, clapping his
hands:
'off with ye! You shall have three minutes' law - upon my soul you
shall'.
Phebe did not run - she had no power to do so; but she hastened with
what speed she could to the spring, and from the hollow of her hands
drank enough of its cold stream to chase the coming faintness: she then
sprinkled her head and face copiously; and thus refreshed and
strenghtened, she turned back towards the hut, at the door of which
Whitlaw and Johnson stood lounging, and each with a cigar in his mouth.
'You are coming back, are you?' cried the former, stepping forward to
meet her. 'Then I'll be d--d if she hasn't been thinking better of it.
So away with you, friend Johnson, and I'll settle this matter myself.
However, you may as well leave me the cat in case she should turn about
again'.
Johnson threw down the instrument without speaking, and prepared to
depart.
'Please, master, let me be flogged', siad the poor girl beseechingly, -
'please let me be flogged, and sent to the rice-gounds afterwards'.
'Stay where you are, Johnson!' roarded the brutal Whitlaw; 'she shall
have it now if I never flog nigger more. Strip, black toad - strip, or
you shall be soaked in oil and then singed. Strip her, Johnson, d'ye
hear? - and if you can't, by the living Jingo I'll help you'.
The struggling but helpless victim was seized by the two men at the
same moment, and the abhorrent threat would have been quickly executed,
had not a discordant laugh from the outside of the hut startled and
caused them to desist from their occupation while they turned to
ascertain whence the strange interruption proceeded.
The figure which now presented itself at the door might have appalled
any one who beheld it for the first time. A negress, seeming to have
been originally of almost dwarfish stuture, and now bent nearly double
with age, whose head was covered with wool as white as snow, and whose
eyes rolled about with a restless movement that appeared to indicate
insanity, stood on the threshold of the door, one hand resting on a
stout bamboo, and the other raised with its finger pointed as if in
mockery of the group within; and again a croaking laugh burst from her.
The person of the intruder was known to them all, and moreover she was
but a time-worn paralytic slave; yet there was that about her which
neither the callous indifference of the driver, nor the bold audacity
of the confidential clerk, could look upon unmoved.
This wretched relic of a life of labour and woe had been on the
plantation longer than its owner or any of his numerous dependants
could
remember - her age was indeed asserted by many among them to exceed
greatly the length of days usually allotted to even the happiest and
idlest of the human race, and yet it was recorded of her that she had
borne more children and performed more extraordinary tasks than any
other slave was ever before believed to have done. Either in
consequence of this species of renown, or for some other reasons
connected with her former history, she was considered by her master and
all his myrmidons as a sort of privileged personage, neither expected
to perform any sort of labour - of which indeed she appeared perfectly
incapable, - nor to answer at any of the musters, nor to be challenged
for any of her wanderings or wild freaks whatever.
The feeling concerning her wavered, according to the character and
temperament of different individuals, between reverence for a being in
some sort supernatural, and the mixed pity and fear inspired by the
presence of a maniac.
The slaves, with the sole exception perhaps of poor Phebe, firmly
believed her to be immortal, and in close communion with some spirit of
the air, who at her bidding would bring weal or woe upon the white man
or the negro according as they pleased or offended her; and she was
accordingly treated with invariable kindness and respect by them all.
How much of this superstition was shared by the whites, it might be
difficult to say; but the unwonted licence and indulgence accorded her
seemed to indicate, considering at whose hands she received it, some
sentiment by no means commonly shown by the white race to the black.
Rose, Rose, coal-black Rose!
I wish I may be scotched if I don't love Rose!
were the first words the beldam articulated after she had ceased her
shout of unnatural laughter. 'O, massa clerk!' she added, 'dat be your
way making lub!' and again the cabin seemed to ring with her discordant
laughter.
Whitlaw had quitted his grasp of Phebe the instant she appeared, and
now stood pale with rage, or fear, or both, and apparently undecided as
to what he should do or say next.
In order fully to comprehend the conduct of my hero on this and some
future occasions, it will be necessary to remember that his education
for the first eleven years of his life was of the very lowest kind, and
precisely such as to substitute superstition for religion in his mind:
nor were the subsequent years, during which he acquired the knowledge
of reading and writing at Natchez, at all less likely to inculcate
error, instead of truth, respecting the immaterial world, than were
those which preceded them.
Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw is no solitary instance of a sharp, active,
bold sort of intellect, which at the very moment that it boasts its
scepticism in religion, secretly owns and trembles before the influence
of superstition.
The moment previous to that at which the palsied and decrepit hag
entered, Whitlaw stood fearless and undaunted before Heaven, ready to
commit the most hideous crimes in defiance of its laws; but now he
stood doubting and unnerved before her, as if awaiting her fiat either
to prosecute or abandon his purpose.
'I say, massa clerk', said the old negress, again suspending her mirth,
- 'I say, massa, you come wid under dem black trees, and I teach you
summat; - but step softly, massa - don't scare de green birds - they
are Juno's spirits'.
As she spoke, she walked across the hut to the back door, which opened
upon the forest. Her pace was a singular mixture of activity and
decreptitude, every step being something between a jump and a hobble.
When she reached the door, she turned to see if he whom she had
summoned
were following her; and on perceiving that he still stood beside the
girl as if undecided, she twisted her uncouth features into a most
portentous frown, and raising her bamboo, seemed to drawing figures
with it in the air.
The young man hestitated no longer, but, as if under the influence of
her wand, stepped hastily after her. She laid the bamboo lightly on his
shoulder as he approached, and peering up into his face, fixed for a
moment her restless eyes upon his; then removing her staff, and
pointing it towards Johnson, she uttered in a sort of chant, but
totally free from all negro peculiarity of pronunciation,
Solemn words must secret be!
No ear must hear, nor eye must see,
What shall pass 'twixt thee and me.
Whitlaw immediately made his attendant a sign to depart, which was
promptly and silently obeyed. The old woman then proceeded towards the
trees; and Whitlaw followed her, leaving Phebe standing in the middle
of the floor trembling between hope and fear, but thanking Heaven with
tearful gratitude for this most unexpected reprieve.
CHAPTER XIII
alf-an-hour
before midnight on the following Friday, Edward and Lucy Bligh, who had
passed the interval in anxious but vain expectation of seeing Phebe,
set out together to reconnoitre her dwelling, and to discover, with as
much caution as possible, the cause of her delay. The crescent moon,
which on the night of Phebe's visit to them had set at too early an
hour to befriend her, now made the first part of their expedition
delightful; and as they walked hand-in-hand through the primeval
forest, any who had listened to their conversation, and marked their
young faces in the fine clear obscure of that faint light, might have
fancied that they were the spirits of some purer and holier race,
permitted to revisit the land their kindred had lost.
Lucy was a good walker, but the distance which Phebe had traversed in
fifty minutes took her an hour and a quarter, and the moon had set and
heavy darkness hung upon the landscape when at last they reached the
solitary hut of Peggy. So cloudy and dark indeed was the night become,
that it was more by the rippling sound of the little stream that
trickled from the spring behind the washerwoman's dwelling, than from
any object their eyes could distinguish, that they perceived at length
that they were at the termination of their walk.
They now approached the door of the hut, and cautiously listened for a
sound either within or near it; but all was profoundly still. Lucy, who
fancied she should be exposed to less danger if discovered than her
brother, prevailed on him to remain at some short distance from the
door while she attempted to open it. The latch yielded to her touch,
and she entered; but the darkness was such that she could discern
nothing.
'Phebe!' she said in a low soft voice hardly above a whisper.
'Phebe! - who is it calls on Phebe?' exclaimed the voice of Peggy; 'who
is it calls for my poor, poor lost child?'
'It is I - it is Lucy Bligh', was the reply. 'Why do you call her lost?
- Tell me, Peggy, where she is gone, and who you have with in the hut?'
'Oh, mistress! mistress!' sobbed out the wretched mother, 'then she is
not run away to you? - Oh me! Oh me! - that was my only hope!'
'She was with me late on Tuesday night, Peggy', replied Lucy, gently
approaching the bed; 'but I have never seen her since. When did she
quit the hut?'
'Let me get up - let me come out with you into the air! - I feel
choking, mistress!' replied the poor negress, who was in truth at that
moment totally unfit for any exclamation.
'Do so, my poor Peggy', replied her former mistress kindly. 'My brother
is near at hand - I will go and bring him into the porch while you get
your clothes on; and I trust that we may be able amongst us to find out
where my poor Phebe is gone'.
Lucy then groped her way out of the hut, and in a few minutes returned
with her brother to the open porch which connected the two chambers of
the hut, and having cautiously advanced through buckets and rinsing
tubs, at last discovered a bench, on which they seated themselves in
total darkness to await the coming of Peggy.
'Are you here, mistress?' was pronounced almost close to the ear of
Lucy before the sound of any foot-fall had given notice that the
negress approached them.
'We are both here, Peggy,' replied Edward; 'can you not strike a light,
that we may see each other while we converse? We have never had a night
so dark as this'.
'A light, Master Edward! - you were raised on the old master's grounds,
and you don't know yet what slavery means. If I was to kindle a light,
we would have a dozen cow-hides hanging over us - at least over me,
Master Edward - in less than ten minutes'.
'Well, then', said Lucy, 'we will do without a light. But tell us about
Phebe - when did she leave you?'
'Oh me! it was I left her!' replied the poor slave, weeping bitterly, -
'it was I left her, Miss Lucy! - Had I stopped by her, I must haved
knowed something; but now I know nothing - nothing!'
The inquiries of Edward elicited an account of the scene which took
place between Whitlaw and Phebe on the evening he had last quitted the
hut; and when Peggy repeated the cruel threats with which it had
concluded, Lucy exclaimed with a burst of uncontrollable emotion - 'Did
I not tell you, Edward, that she was true to us? - Oh, my poor Phebe!
it was this that she would not tell! - She knew how much we would have
done to save her, and she feared the danger it might cost us - dear,
generous Phebe! - But I will find her if she be above ground; - what
have I to fear? - I am not a slave. - Edward! shall we not seek for
Phebe, in spite of master, overseers, and all! We are not black blood;
- what is the worst we can fear!'
'Murder!' in a deep distinct whisper, was the answer to this question;
and as peculiar was the tone in which it was pronounced, that the
brother and sister started, for neither of them recognized in it the
voice of their old servant. Nevertheless it was Peggy who uttered it;
and in the next moment she added, but still in so low a tone as to show
that even in that hour of universal rest she feared a listener,
'Nothing less is now punishment enough for any white who dares openly
to befriend a slave'.
Bligh well knew that this doctrine was daily becoming more general
among the planters. The principles of the 'LYNCH
LAW' which have since been openly
recognised, acknowledged, and acted upon with impunity in the face of
day, and before the eyes of thousands of American citizens, were indeed
at that time only beginning to show themselves in occasional acts of
desperate ferocity, which though from the first they were permitted to
pass unpunished by the legislatures of the States in which they were
committed, had not then fully reached the sort of tacit legality at
which they soon afterwards arrived; but Edward, when from time to time
he heard of the outrages perpetrated at New Orleans, had felt, while he
shuddered at their atrocity, a something at his heart which seemed like
a foretaste of martyrdom.
If there were any mixture therefore of human terror in this sensation,
the
young enthusiast was himself unconscious of it; and if his pulse
had fluttered and his cheek grown paler than ordinary while listening
to the frightful tales which reached him in his forest dwelling, it was
only when some idea of Lucy's being exposed to danger suggested itself.
Thus was it with him now, as he heard the prophetic enunciation of
Peggy upon all who should seek to befriend her race. He trembled - and
stretching out a cold damp hand to seek that of his sister, who sat
beside him, he said sternly,
'It is your first duty, Lucy, to obey implicitly the brother to whose
care it has pleased the Almighty to consign you: - speak not then so
presumptuously of what it is your purpose to do. I have made you, Lucy,
my companion in a perilous enterpise: but I did so in the belief that
no rash or self-willed measures on your part would ever thwart or
trouble me'.
'Edward,' exclaimed the startled girl, eagerly grasping his extended
hand, 'what reason can you have to doubt my willing obedience to
everything you wish? - What have I said, to make you speak thus?'
'Forgive me, love!' replied Edward, recovering himself: 'I was very
wrong to doubt you; - but in truth you terrifed me when I heard you
talk of seeking Phebe. That would not be the way to assist her, Lucy;
whatever is done in this must be done most cautiously, for her sake as
well as your own. - But we have not yet heard all. What happened,
Peggy, after your daughter returned from Fox's clearing? You have seen
her since, have you not?'
The bereaved mother then related the having perceived the approach of
Whitlaw and Johnson on the following morning, and confessed, with the
bitterest expressions of self-reproach, that rather than witness the
outrage and cruelty which threatened her child, she had escaped with
her two little ones into the forest, where she remained in a state of
unspeakable misery for about an hour, and then returned sick and
trembling to her hut, which she found totally deserted, and with no
trace of the scene that had probably been acted there, but the cow-hide
that Johnson had thrown on the floor when Whitlaw had first commanded
him to retire.
For several minutes after Peggy had concluded her narrative, no sound
was heard in the still darkness which surrounded them but the stifled
sobs of the poor negress. Lucy was silent, lest the expression of her
strong feelings might renew the displeasure of her brother: and Edward
himself was too deeply occupied in pondering upon the mysterious
disappearance of the girl, to speak hastily on the subject. At length
he said,
'Your grief is so violent, Peggy, that it is plain you fear something
very terrible. Let us know all. What is the worst you fear? Do you
think that wretch Whitlaw will kill her?'
Edward might have been puzzled how to interpret without the commentary
of words the bitter smile which this question brought to the lips of
the poor slave; but he saw it not, - and in a moment she answered,
'Kill her, master! - No, they will not kill her, no more than they
would the finest horse in the colonel's stable. My Phebe is the flower
of all his gang - there is none other like her!' And again tears choked
her utterance.
'Then you can fear nothing for her', resumed Edward, 'worse than what
you fled to the forest to avoid seeing. Think not, poor soul! that I
speak lightly of this', he continued, in a voice of the tenderest
compassion; 'God knows it cannot be more horrible in your eyes than in
mine; but if you think her life is safe - '
'But where, Master Edward', exclaimed the mother in agony of grief, -
'where is she to live? - That will be the punishment. My Phebe loved
her mother! - there's not an overseer on the estate but knows that: for
it my limbs ached, it was she was up in the morning to lighten my work;
and when I was sick and afraid to say it, it was she was away to the
overseer to tell it, and frighten them into thinking they might lose my
labour, and then making all straight by offering to be double tasked.
The devil clerk, Master Edward, knows all this, and he has taken her
from me on purpose to torture her'.
'Likely enough, my poor Peggy', replied Edward, 'but, as you are aware
that the profit of your owner is the first object, do you not see that
it is probable they will not separate you long? They must know that you
work better together than you could asunder'.
'But that's not all - that's not all!' cried Peggy bitterly; ''tis the
price they'll get by her! - Oh, Master Edward, I have always trembled
for that! Black Phebe is counted such a handsome girl, that at New
Orlines, they say, she'd fetch double what her value would be if she
was only kept for her work'.
The miserable truth these words contained admitted of no conslation;
and the faintly-expressed hope that this most cruel measure might not
be resorted to, was all her pitying friends could give.
Lucy started as sge perceived that the objects around them were
becoming
faintly visible.
'We must go, Edward,' said she with nervous agitation. 'It was our
being here on Tuesday evening that brought on all this misery. Let us
not be found here again, or poor Peggy may be made more wretched still'.
A few minutes longer were occupied in listening to Peggy's earnest
prayers that they would use the privilege 'their blessed white skin'
gave them - such was her phrase - to inquire at Natchez, and in all
directions round about, whether 'Black Phebe' had been sld.
Edward very solemnly gave his promise that he would fearlessly use
every means in his power to obtain intelligence respecting her; and
then, leaving some pastoral instructions to be cautiously delivered to
his flock during the time he might be employed in this perilous quest,
he again led forth his sister into the forest, through which they now
found their way without difficulty, by help of the faint light which
gradually increased upon them as they advanced. - But the spirits of
both were heavily oppressed. Lucy trembled with the most affectionate
anxiety for the safety of her humble friend: and Edward felt more
keenly than he had ever before done, how terrible was the
responsibility he had taken upon himself in leading his young sister
into dangers from which he might find he had no power to shield her. If
the peril had threatened himself alone, he would have hailed it as a
summons to glory; but when the frightful idea crossed him that Lucy
might share it, his courage failed entirely, his heart sunk within him,
and tears trembled in his eyes, while he pressed the pale girl to his
bosom as he reached the threshold of their own rude home.
'Lie down, my poor Lucy, for an hour or two', he said, tenderly kissing
her: 'my head is working strangely upon what we have heard this night,
- I want to be alone, and will wander about for another hour or so, and
then return to fix the corn-cakes for our breakfast. When they are
ready, I will call you, and you shall see if I am not almost as skilful
as yourself. - Go to rest, dear love! Sleep, dear Lucy, - sleep!'
CHAPTER XIV
dward Bligh
had indeed need to be alone. Never till now had his poor spirit been
harassed by that worst of human anxieties, - a conscientious doubt as
to what it was his duty to do.
Not only had he pledged himself secretly and solemnly before Heaven to
devote himself body and soul to alleviate the miseries of American
slaves, but he had this night given a promise to one amongst them who,
from her well-known worth and faithful services, deserved his warmest
zeal; - to her he had promised to be an active agent in discovering her
daughter, though he knew that daughter to be in the hands of one who
had power and will to punish any interference with the most terrible
severity. Could he perform this promise without involving his sister in
the danger? - could he break it without violating the vow he had
voluntarily pronounced before God?
The agony of his mind was terrible. Could he have seen Lucy placed in
safety, his own path would have been plain before him: - nay, it woud
have appeared to his exalted contemplation both easy and delightful. He
firmly believed that it might, and probably would, lead him to death;
but it would be the blessed death of a martyr, and he hugged the idea
of
it with a sort of rapture. But even at the moment that he seemed to see
a crown of glory waiting for him, the image of Lucy came before his
eyes, and his hope and his strength failed at once. At one moment he
had convinced himself that it was his duty to leave Louisiana
immediately, and pursue the business of teaching with his orphan sister
either in the State of Ohio, or any other not infected with the mildew
of slavery which they might be able to reach. But scarcely had he
permitted himself to breathe freely as one whose doubts were over,
when, not only Peggy and Phebe, but all his woodland congregation
resumed their place in his memory, and he held himself in abhorrence as
a renegade and a coward.
This mental strife lasted much beyond the hour he had allotted for his
walk; but the corn-cakes were forgotten, and the weary Edward trhew
himself at length upon the ground utterly exhausted both in mind and
body.
In this situation, 'Natur's kind restorer' settled on his eyelids, and
he slept long and soundly. When he awoke, all things appeared to wear a
different aspect. Multitudes of birds were joyously singing around him;
the bright sun shone furtively through the trees, chequering the ground
with golden trellis-work; and the sweet morning air seemed to bring
new life and vigour to his spirit.
Earnest and ardent was the prayer which followed his waking, and he
rose from his knees cheered, strengthened, and full of hope.
There is an ever alertness in the spirit at such an hour as this, which
enables us both readily to suggest and promptly to decided on what we
have to do. Before his homeward path was fully trod, Edward had
completely settled in his own mind what his future line of
conduct should be; and the cheerful air with which he apologised to
Lucy, whom he found engaged in performing the task he had himself
undertaken, for having lingered so long, made her bless the effect of
the lengthened walk which she had wept to think of.
Their breakfast of milk and corn-bread was eaten hastily, for the
children who attended their school were already seen approaching by
more
than one forest-path. Edward started up, saying,
'Lucy! will you undertake once more to-day to perform the work which
rightfully belongs to me? - Will you keep school without me?'
'Most certainly I will, dearest Edward', she replied; 'and if, as I
guess, you have hit upon some promising expedient for the discovery of
my poor Phebe, the double duty will seem very light'.
Though these words implied no direct question, Edward felt that his
sister expected to learn from him why he was about to absent himself;
and his projects were as yet too vague to justify his stating them.
After a moment's pause, however, he answered cheerfully, -
'I am going to Natchez, Lucy. There are, you know, four dollars
destined to be expended in the purchase of some needful comforts
for our establishment here. Now, I flatter myself that by means of a
little store-gossip where I shall buy one thing, and a little more
where I shall buy another, I may pick up all the news stirring about
the sale of negroes, which is as interesting a theme there as the
barter of horses among jockeys. If Phebe has been sold since Wednesday,
I think I shall find it out. Should this be the case, notwithstanding
poor Peggy's grief, I shall be thankful, as your unfortunate favourite
cannot be in worse hands than those of Colonel Dart and his detestable
parasite Whitlaw. If, on the contrary, she has not been sold - ' Here
Edward paused, for he knew there was no comfort to be found in the
alternative; but, after a moment's silence, he added, 'If she has not
been sold, I must endeavour to discover among our poor scattered flock,
what has been her fate'.
The importance of the errand as thus state appeared to Lucy amply
sufficient for her brother's walk to Natchez; so, begging God's
blessing upon him, she waved him off, and immediately sat down
surrounded by a dozen boys and girls, and for six long hours devoted
herself to the drudgery of teaching.
Edward had very faithfully explained a part of his business, but not
the whole of it. It was indeed his purpose to discover, if possible,
whether Phebe had been sold; and he felt pretty certain that if this
had
happened he should hear of it. But there was another and a dearer
object
which took him from his daily task, the hope of success in which gave
elasticity to his step and a cheering warmth to his heart. He hoped at
Natchez to hear of some occupation for Lucy which might shelter her
from the danger he was deeply persuaded must soon fall upon himself.
Could he succeed in this, all the painful vacillation he had recently
suffered from, would, he well knew, leave him for ever; and unchecked
by fear or doubt of any kind, he should move steadily onward in the
path he had traced for himself, and which, it was his earnest hope,
would lead him at not very distant period to the point where he might
pass from earth to heaven.
The distance to Natchez was about five miles; and his sound nap in the
forest, together with the hope that cheered him, caused him totally to
forget his night of anxious watchfulness, and he found himself already
looking down from the bright green slope on which stands this singular
little town, equally blessed by nature and accursed by man, before he
thought that he could have traversed half the distance.
Edward Bligh was not perhaps likely to be particularly successful in
any business in which that style of colloquy usually denominated gossip
was of necessity to make a part. But on this particular occasion he
seemed inspired; and in justice to the versatility of his powers, we
must follow him in his talk as he rambled from store to store.
He first entered the wide, multifarious magazine of Mr Monroe
Vandumper.
Though it was still early in the forenoon, there were no less than
seven gentlemn of first-rate standing at Natchez indulging in the
luxury of a cigar in and about the store. Three of these were perched
in attitudes of undoubted ease, but rather questionable elegance, on
bales or boxes placed outside the door; and the other four were
accommodated within it, in a manner evidently very satisfactory to
themselves, but which would probably have been the last chosen by the
inhabitants of any other country when engaged in a search after comfort.
One sat astride the counter; a second had climbed to a third tier of
woollen cloths set edgeways, apparently with no other object than to
place his heels upon a shelf immediately above the door of entrance, so
that by a judicious position of his head he was enabled to peep between
his knees at every person who entered; the third sat deep sunk in an
empty cask; while the fourth balanced himself on one leg out of four of
a stool so placed as to permit his hitching his heels on the bar from
which the shop-scales for coffee, sugar, and the like, were suspended
over the counter.
Edward Bligh entered the store, intending that the purchase of a pound
of coffee should lead the way to conversation either with the master of
it, or his customers; and to facilitate this, he began by examining
some 'negro shoes', as they are called, which lay piled up half-way to
the ceiling on one side of the magazine.
'Famous good shoes these, sir', said he to the only man who had not a
cigar in his mouth, and whom he rightly judged to be the master, though
he was earnestly occupied in reading a newspaper; 'capital make - what
may be the damage, sir, of half-a-dozen of them?'
'That's according, I expect', replied Mr Monroe Vandumper, without
raising his eyes from his paper.
'Any particular news, sir, to-day?' resumed Edward, still continuing
his examination of the negro-shoes.
'Umph!' responded Mr Vandumper; 'what part of the country may you be
from? - Back-woods away, I guess?'
'Just so, sir,' replied Edward good-humouredly; 'and it's quite a treat
to come to Natchez and hear a little how the world goes. They're
beginning to get feverish at New Orleans, I hear; but I hope you've
nothing of the sort here as yet?'
'Do you want them shoes?' was the only answer vouchsafed to this
inquiry by Mr Monroe Vandumper; but Edward was too deeply intrested in
his object to be easily discouraged, and practising a little artifice
which upon any less occasion he would have scorned, he took a handful
of silver and copper money from his pocket, saying,
'We back-woodsmen, you know, sir, sometimes want more than we have
dollars to pay for; and so I must see all I can, and choose for the
best
at last. 'Tis not exactly for myself I was inquiring about the shoes;
but a neighbour of mine owns slaves, and it is about them that I was
asking. And, now I think of it, he told me to inquire in the town here,
if there has been any sale lately of young plantation blacks. He wants
a girl that can wash and iron, and he would not stand for price. You
have not seen any advertisment that you think might suit, - have you,
sir?'
'That's considerable more than I can pretend to say. I see over many to
remember any of 'em. but if you're looking after that commodity, you'd
best step over the way by the market younder, and you'll see
advertisements stuck up everlasting there'.
'Then that's jest what I'll do, sir; but first, I'll trouble you to
sell me a pound of coffee'.
There was something in the sweet voice and gentle bearings of Edward
that might have disarmed the churlishness of Cerberus; and its
influence was felt not only by Mr Mpnroe Vandumper himself, who
actually laid aside his newspaper and set about weighing the coffee,
but also by the elegant youth who was swinging his legs, one on each
side the counter, and who having just finished his cigar, thus bespoke
him:
'So you're after finding a smart smut - are, my lad? Confound them all,
say I! A fine rumpus they've been making at Oglevie's down at the
factory by the river, near Orlines. Why, if they haven't had the
unbelievable impudence to be found with three tracts and a newspaper
hid under one of the presses, may I never taste another cigar! - and
two of the black devils absconded'.
'Is that lately, sir?' said Edward.
'Five days ago, by G-d!' replied the young man, bringing his off-leg
over the counter, and letting both hang down close to Edward's arm, -
'only Monday last: and when the tracts were found, and stuck up burning
upon the end of a cane, the whole gang set up such a howl that the
foreman was right-down scared. The head clerk is a brother of my own,
and he come up in a steamer yesterday to look at a lot of infernal
trash of the same sort that was picked up in some cotton-grounds
hereabouts. They hope to trace the white rascals they come from; and
it's determined on all sides that they shall be tarred and burnt to
death in the nearest market-place, let them be found where they may'.
'That will be sport, at any rate|' observed the gentleman who was
ensconced
in the tub. 'I would not mind having to flog a nigger or two out of
their work for a week, to have the glory of seeing a saint burnt for
it'.
'I expect not, squire,' said the balancing occupant of the stool: 'it
would pay any of us well for the loss of a dozen lazy black devils for
a week, such a sight as that; and what's more, we must contrive to have
it soon, or I calculate worse will follow. I'm positive certain that
some of my black varment are being learned to read; and if that
spreads, we'll have an insurrection and be murdered in our beds before
we're a year older, as sure as the sun's in heaven'.
'Massa want tree pound of baccy', said a fine-looking negro lad,
approaching the receipt of custom with money for the purchase on his
extended palm.
'You be d--d!' cried the young man on the counter, raising one of his
feet as he spoke, and giving a sharp kick to the boy's hand, the money,
which consisted of some copper and one or two small silver coins, was
scattered far and wide on the floor.
Every white man in the store, save Edward, burst into a shout of
laughter.
A Store at Natchez
The young negro was in an agony of terror, and threw himself on the
ground to recover the money; but his persecutor sprang from the
counter, and assiduously collecting with his feet all the dust and
rubbish on the floor to cover the coins, and occasionally kicking aside
the hands of the boy as he sought to recover them, produced such a
continuation of noisy merriment from the lookers-on that the loungers
outside the store were induced to enter, in order to inquire its cause.
No sooner was the jest made known, than the clamour, kickings, and
buffetings became general; while the poor victim, suffering alike from
present pain and the dread of future punishment, groaned aloud as his
tormentors rolled him from one to the other beneath their feet. Drops
of agony stood on Edward's brow. Could he for one moment have possessed
a giant's strength, he would willingly have consented to die the next,
might he but have used it to crush the wretches whose wanton, cowardly
barbarity he was thus forced to witness. He turned to the door for air,
and a moment's reflection closed his idle rage, while it strengthened a
thousand-fold the steadfast purpose of his heart.
'You've got fine fun there, I expect - there's no denying that,' said
Mr Vandumper, recovering at length from his fit of immoderate laughter;
'but I'll be burnt if I don't make you pay for the baccy yourselves; so
quit, and let the varment get up and do his errand'.
The weather was warm, and the exercise they were engaged in violent, so
that Mr Vandumper's remonstrances was seconded by fatigue, and after
one final kick from each, the sport ended, and the negro-boy was
suffered
to search among the dust for the money he had lost. He recovered it all
except one small silver coin of the value of six cents. Having sought
for this in vain for several minutes, he rose to his feet as if
inspired by a sudden ray of hope, and with a look of innocent entreaty
that might have moved a savage, said,
'You give me the baccy, massa, for this?' holding out the recovered
money as he spoke.
Mr Monroe Vandumper received the money and counted it.
'Now, isn't he an impudent varment?' he exclaimed, turning to the weary
jesters, who were wiping their brows after the sport. 'Isn't he a
proper nigger? - You black dirt, you! d'ye think I'll trust such a one
as you a picciune?'
Exhausted as they were, this sally produced another hearty laugh from
the bystanders; while Edward, whose eyes were fixed upon the boy, saw
him visibly tremble, and such an expression of terror took possession
of his young features, that, thoughtless of the observations it might
provoke, he supplied the piece of money that was wanting, saying,
'Off with you, boy, with your baccy;
and
then
I
shall
get my coffee,
you see'.
A glance of mingled surprise and rapture shot from the large eyes of
the boy as he fixed them for a moment on the face of his benefactor;
but Edward had the prudence to take no farther notice of him.
Mr Vandumper whistled a bar or two of Yankee Doodle without speaking,
weighed the three pounds of tobacco, tied it up, again counted the
money that had been laid upon the counter, and then pushing the parcel
to the young slave, dismissed him with saying, 'Go and be flogged for
wasting your master's time, you black imp'.
The boy gave one more speaking glance at Edward and departed, As he
reached the door, the gentleman who was perched aloft close to it, and
who had taken no farther part in the scene that had just passed than
cheering the actors in it by shouts of laughter, stooping forward his
head as the boy passed under him, contrived accurately to spit upon him
as he went out. Once more the chamber rang with laughter; and then
Edward received his pound of coffee and left the shop.
GO TO VOLUME
II
