It must be observed that, among other appropriations from his master’s stock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his name and address; and that the style under which he moved, among the colored circles of New Orleans, was that of Mr. St. Clare.
“I’m certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir,” said Adolph.
Benoir was the name of Marie St. Clare’s family, and Jane was one of her servants.
“Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those drops are for the ball, tomorrow night? They are certainly bewitching!”
“I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of you men will come to!” said Jane, tossing her pretty head til the ear-drops twinkled again. “I shan’t dance with you for a whole evening, if you go to asking me any more questions.”
“O, you couldn’t be so cruel, now! I was just dying to know whether you would appear in your pink tarletane,” said Adolph.
“What is it?” said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon who came skipping down stairs at this moment.
“Why, Mr. St. Clare’s so impudent!”
“On my honor,” said Adolph, “I’ll leave it to Miss Rosa now.”
“I know he’s always a saucy creature,” said Rosa, poising herself on one of her little feet, and looking maliciously at Adolph. “He’s always getting me so angry with him.”
“O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart, between you,” said Adolph. “I shall be found dead in my bed, some morning, and you’ll have it to answer for.”
“Do hear the horrid creature talk!” said both ladies, laughing immoderately.
“Come,—clar out, you! I can’t have you cluttering up the kitchen,” said Dinah; “in my way, foolin’ round here.”
“Aunt Dinah’s glum, because she can’t go to the ball,” said Rosa.
“Don’t want none o’ your light-colored balls,” said Dinah; “cuttin’ round, makin’ b’lieve you’s white folks. Arter all, you’s niggers, much as I am.”
“Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it lie straight,” said Jane.
“And it will be wool, after all,” said Rosa, maliciously shaking down her long, silky curls.
“Well, in the Lord’s sight, an’t wool as good as bar, any time?” said Dinah. “I’d like to have Missis say which is worth the most,—a couple such as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,—I won’t have ye round!”
Here the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner. St. Clare’s voice was heard at the head of the stairs, asking Adolph if he meant to stay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of the dining-room, said,
“Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and attend to your muslins.”
Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation with the old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw her go on, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she set her basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded shawl which covered her shoulders.
“I’ll carry your basket a piece,” said Tom, compassionately.
“Why should ye?” said the woman. “I don’t want no help.”
“You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin’,” said Tom.
“I an’t sick,” said the woman, shortly.
“I wish,” said Tom, looking at her earnestly,—“I wish I could persuade you to leave off drinking. Don’t you know it will be the ruin of ye, body and soul?”
“I knows I’m gwine to torment,” said the woman, sullenly. “Ye don’t need to tell me that ar. I ’s ugly, I ’s wicked,—I ’s gwine straight to torment. O, Lord! I wish I ’s thar!”
Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen, impassioned earnestness.
“O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han’t ye never heard of Jesus Christ?”
“Jesus Christ,—who’s he?”
“Why, he’s the Lord,” said Tom.
“I think I’ve hearn tell o’ the Lord, and the judgment and torment. I’ve heard o’ that.”
“But didn’t anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor sinners, and died for us?”
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” said the woman; “nobody han’t never loved me, since my old man died.”
“Where was you raised?” said Tom.
“Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil’en for market, and sold ’em as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a speculator, and my Mas’r got me o’ him.”
“What set you into this bad way of drinkin’?”
“To get shet o’ my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I thought then I’d have one to raise, cause Mas’r wasn’t a speculator. It was de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on ’t, at first; it never cried,—it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck sick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me, and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn’t buy milk for it. She wouldn’t hear to me, when I telled her I hadn’t milk. She said she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child kinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got all gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said ’t wan’t nothin’ but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she wouldn’t let me have it o’ nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake, and made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had to put it away off in a little kind o’ garret, and thar it cried itself to death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin’, to keep its crying out of my ears! I did,—and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment for it! Mas’r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I’ve got thar now!”
“O, ye poor crittur!” said Tom, “han’t nobody never telled ye how the Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han’t they telled ye that he’ll help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?”
“I looks like gwine to heaven,” said the woman; “an’t thar where white folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment, and get away from Mas’r and Missis. I had so,” she said, as with her usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.
Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he met little Eva,—a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant with delight.
“O, Tom! here you are. I’m glad I’ve found you. Papa says you may get out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage,” she said, catching his hand. “But what’s the matter Tom?—you look sober.”
“I feel bad, Miss Eva,” said Tom, sorrowfully. “But I’ll get the horses for you.”
“But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross old Prue.”
Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman’s history. She did not exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both hands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.
1 Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the orthodoxy of revealed religion, defender of the Oxford movement, and Regius professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
Chapter 19
Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued
“Tom, you needn’t get me the horses. I don’t want to go,” she said.
“Why not, Miss Eva?”
“These things sink into my heart, Tom,” said Eva,—“they sink into my heart,” she repeated, earnestly. “I don’t want to go;” and she turned from Tom, and went into the house.
A few days after, another woman came, in old Prue’s place, to bring the rusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.
“Lor!” said Dinah, “what’s got Prue?”
“Prue isn’t coming any more,” said the woman, mysteriously.
“Why not?” said Dinah. “she an’t dead, is she?”
“We doesn’t exactly know. She’s down cellar,” said the woman, glancing at Miss Ophelia.
After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the door.
“What has got Prue, any how?” she said.
The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in low, mysterious tone.
“Well, you mustn’t tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,—and they had her down cellar,—and thar they left her all day,—and I hearn ’em saying that the flies had got to her,—and she’s dead!”
Dinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the spirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with horror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.
“Lor bless us! Miss Eva’s gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let her har such talk? Her pa’ll be rail mad.”
“I shan’t faint, Dinah,” said the child, firmly; “and why shouldn’t I hear it? It an’t so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer it.”
“Lor sakes! it isn’t for sweet, delicate young ladies, like you,—these yer stories isn’t; it’s enough to kill ’em!”
Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.
Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman’s story. Dinah gave a very garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he had drawn from her that morning.
“An abominable business,—perfectly horrible!” she exclaimed, as she entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.
“Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?” said he.
“What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Miss Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and enlarging on its most shocking particulars.
“I thought it would come to that, some time,” said St. Clare, going on with his paper.
“Thought so!—an’t you going to do anything about it?” said Miss Ophelia. “Haven’t you got any selectmen, or anybody, to interfere and look after such matters?”
“It’s commonly supposed that the property interest is a sufficient guard in these cases. If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I don’t know what’s to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief and a drunkard; and so there won’t be much hope to get up sympathy for her.”
“It is perfectly outrageous,—it is horrid, Augustine! It will certainly bring down vengeance upon you.”
“My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I could. If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots. There would be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to anything practically, for such a case. The best we can do is to shut our eyes and ears, and let it alone. It’s the only resource left us.”
“How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things alone?”
“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for that’s the case with the largest half of mankind. Of course, in a community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can’t buy every poor wretch I see. I can’t turn knight-errant, and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it.”
St. Clare’s fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,
“Come, cousin, don’t stand there looking like one of the Fates; you’ve only seen a peep through the curtain,—a specimen of what is going on, the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to anything. ’T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah’s kitchen;” and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with his paper.
Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there grim with indignation. She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire burned; at last she broke out—“I tell you, Augustine, I can’t get over things so, if you can. It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system,—that’s my mind!”
“What now?” said St. Clare, looking up. “At it again, hey?”
“I say it’s perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!” said Miss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.
“I defend it, my dear lady? Who ever said I did defend it?” said St. Clare.
“Of course, you defend it,—you all do,—all you Southerners. What do you have slaves for, if you don’t?”
“Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever does what they don’t think is right? Don’t you, or didn’t you ever, do anything that you did not think quite right?”
“If I do, I repent of it, I hope,” said Miss Ophelia, rattling her needles with energy.
“So do I,” said St. Clare, peeling his orange; “I’m repenting of it all the time.”
“What do you keep on doing it for?”
“Didn’t you ever keep on doing wrong, after you’d repented, my good cousin?”
“Well, only when I’ve been very much tempted,” said Miss Ophelia.
“Well, I’m very much tempted,” said St. Clare; “that’s just my difficulty.”
“But I always resolve I won’t and I try to break off.”
“Well, I have been resolving I won’t, off and on, these ten years,” said St. Clare; “but I haven’t, some how, got clear. Have you got clear of all your sins, cousin?”
“Cousin Augustine,” said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down her knitting-work, “I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my short-comings. I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels them more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some difference between me and you. It seems to me I would cut off my right hand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was wrong. But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I don’t wonder you reprove me.”
“O, now, cousin,” said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying his head back in her lap, “don’t take on so awfully serious! You know what a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was. I love to poke you up,—that’s all,—just to see you get earnest. I do think you are desperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it.”
“But this is a serious subject, my boy, Auguste,” said Miss Ophelia, laying her hand on his forehead.
“Dismally so,” said he; “and I—well, I never want to talk seriously in hot weather. What with mosquitos and all, a fellow can’t get himself up to any very sublime moral flights; and I believe,” said St. Clare, suddenly rousing himself up, “there’s a theory, now! I understand now why northern nations are always more virtuous than southern ones,—I see into that whole subject.”
“O, Augustine, you are a sad rattle-brain!”
“Am I? Well, so I am, I suppose; but for once I will be serious, now; but you must hand me that basket of oranges;—you see, you’ll have to ‘stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples,’ if I’m going to make this effort. Now,” said Augustine, drawing the basket up, “I’ll begin: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a fellow to hold two or three dozen of his fellow-worms in captivity, a decent regard to the opinions of society requires—”
“I don’t see that you are growing more serious,” said Miss Ophelia.
