The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865
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Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865
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Meantime the potions of the village doctor have little effect, and
before July is ended a serious illness has declared itself, and Adele is
confined to her chamber. Madame Arles is among the earliest who come
with eager inquiries, and begs to see the sufferer. But she is
confronted by the indefatigable spinster, who, cloaking her denial under
ceremonious form, declares that her state of nervous prostration will
not admit of it. Madame withdraws, sadly; but the visit and the claim
are repeated from time to time, until the stately civility of Miss Johns
arouses her suspicions.
"You deny me, Madame. You do wrong. I love Adele; she loves me. I know
that I could comfort her. You do not understand her nature. She was born
where the sky is soft and warm. You are all cold and harsh,--cold and
harsh in your religion. She has told me as much. I know how she suffers.
I wish I could carry her back to France with me. I pray you, let me see
her, good Madame!"
"It is quite impossible, I assure you," said the spinster, in her most
aggravating manner. "It would be quite against the wishes of my brother,
the Doctor, as well as of Mr. Maverick."
"Monsieur Maverick! _Mon Dieu_, Madame! He is no father to her; he
leaves her to die with strangers; he has no heart; I have better right:
I love her. I must see her!"
And with a passionate step,--those eyes of hers glaring in that strange
double way upon the amazed Miss Eliza,--she strides toward the door, as
if she would overcome all opposition. But before she has gone out, that
cruel pain has seized her, and she sinks upon a chair, quite prostrated,
and with hands clasped wildly over that burden of a heart.
"Too hard! too hard!" she murmurs, scarce above her breath.
The spinster is attentive, but is untouched. Her self-poise never
deserts her. And not then, or at any later period, did poor Madame Arles
succeed in overcoming the iron resolve of Miss Johns.
The good Doctor is greatly troubled by the report of Miss Eliza. Can it
be possible that Adele has given a confidence to this strange woman that
she has not given to them? Cold and harsh! Can Adele, indeed, have said
this? Has he not labored with a full heart? Has he not agonized in
prayer to draw in this wandering lamb to the fold? He has seen, indeed,
that the poor child has chafed much latterly, that the old serenity and
gayety are gone. But is it not a chafing under the fetters of sin? Is it
not that she begins to see more clearly the fiery judgments of God which
will certainly overwhelm the wrongdoers, whatever may be the
unsubstantial and evanescent graces of their mortal life?
Yet, with all the rigidity of his doctrine, which he cannot in
conscience mollify, even for the tender ears of Adele, it disturbs him
strangely to hear that she has qualified his regimen as harsh or severe.
Has he not taught, in season and out of season, the fulness of God's
promises? Has he not labored and prayed? Is it not the ungodly heart in
her that finds his teaching a burden? Is not his conscience safe? Yet,
for all this, it touches him to the quick to think that her childlike,
trustful confidence is at last alienated from him,--that her affection
for him is so distempered by dread and weariness. For, unconsciously, he
has grown to love her as he loves no one save his boy Reuben;
unconsciously his heart has mellowed under her influence. Through her
winning, playful talk, he has taken up that old trail of worldly
affections which he had thought buried forever in Rachel's grave. That
tender touch of her little fingers upon his cheek has seemed to say,
"Life has its joys, old man!" The patter of her feet along the house has
kindled the memories of other gentle steps that tread now silently in
the courts of air. Those songs of hers,--how he has loved them! Never
confessing even to Miss Eliza, still less to himself, how much his heart
is bound up in this little winsome stranger, who has shone upon his
solitary parsonage like a sunbeam.
And the good man, with such thoughts thronging on him, falls upon his
knees, beseeching God to "be over the sick child, to comfort her, to
heal her, to pour down His divine grace upon her, to open her blind eyes
to the richness of His truth, to keep her from all the machinations and
devices of Satan, to arm her with true holiness, to make her a golden
light in the household, to give her a heart of love toward all, and most
of all toward Him who so loved her that He gave His only begotten Son."
And the Doctor, rising from his attitude of prayer, and going toward the
little window of his study to arrange it for the night, sees a slight
figure in black pacing up and down upon the opposite side of the way,
and looking up from time to time to the light that is burning in the
window of Adele. He knows on the instant who it must be, and fears more
than ever the possible influence which this strange woman, who is so
persistent in her attention, may have upon the heart of the girl. The
Doctor had heretofore been disposed to turn a deaf ear to the current
reproaches of Madame Arles for her association with the poor outcast
daughter of the village; but her appearance at this unseemly hour of the
night, coupled with his traditional belief in the iniquities of the
Romish Church, excited terrible suspicions in his mind. Like most holy
men, ignorant of the crafts and devices of the world, he no sooner
blundered into a suspicion of some deep Devil's cunning than every
footfall and every floating zephyr seemed to confirm it. He bethought
himself of Maverick's earnest caution; and before he went to bed that
night, he prayed that no designing Jezebel might corrupt the poor child
committed to his care.
The next night the Doctor looked again from his window, after blowing
out his lamp, and there once more was the figure in black, pacing up and
down. What could it mean? Was it possible that some Satanic influence
could pass over from this emissary of the Evil One, (as he firmly
believed her to be,) for the corruption of the sick child who lay in the
delirium of a fever above?
The extreme illness of Adele was subject of common talk in the village,
and the sympathy was very great. On the following night Adele was far
worse, and the Doctor, at about his usual bedtime, went out to summon
the physician. At a glance he saw in the shadow of the opposite houses
the same figure pacing up and down. He hurried his steps, fearing she
might seek occasion to dart in upon the sick-chamber before his return.
But he had scarcely gone twenty paces from his door, when he heard a
swift step behind, and in another instant there was a grip, as of a
tigress, upon his arm.
"Adele,--how is she? Tell me!"
"Ill,--very ill," said the Doctor, shaking himself from her grasp, and
continued in his solemn manner, "it is an hour to be at home, woman!"
But she, paying no heed to his admonition, says,--
"I must see her,--I _must_!"--and dashes back toward the parsonage.
The Doctor, terrified, follows after. But he can keep no manner of pace
with that swift, dark figure that glides before him. He comes to the
porch panting. The door is closed. Has the infuriated woman gone in? No,
for presently her grasp is again upon his arm: for a moment she had
sunk, exhausted by fatigue, or overcome by emotion, upon the porch. Her
tone is more subdued.
"I entreat you, good Doctor, let me see Adele!--for Christ's sake, if
you be His minister, let me see her!"
"Impossible, woman, impossible!" says the Doctor, more than ever
satisfied of her Satanic character by what he counts her blasphemous
speech. "Adaly is delirious,--fearfully excited; it would destroy her.
The only hope is in perfect quietude."
The woman releases her grasp.
"Please, Doctor, let me come to-morrow. I must see her! I will see her!"
"You shall not," said the Doctor, with solemnity,--"never, with my
permission. Go to your home, woman, and pray God to have mercy on you."
"Monster!" exclaimed she, passionately, as she shook the Doctor's arm,
still under her grasp; and murmuring other words in language the good
man did not comprehend, she slipped silently down the yard,--away into
the darkness.
DOWN THE RIVER.
She was of pure race, black as her first ancestor,--if, indeed, she ever
had an ancestor, and were not an indigenous outcrop of African soil,--so
black that the sun could gild her. Her countenance was as unlovely as it
is possible for one to be that owns the cheeriest of smiles and the most
dazzling of teeth. It would have been difficult to say how old she was,
though she had the effect of being undersized, and, with sharp
shoulders, elbows, and knees, seemed scarcely possessed of a rounded
muscle in all her lithe and agile frame.
Nevertheless, she was a dancer by profession,--if she could have
dignified her most frequent occupation by the title of profession. With
a thin blue scarf turbaned round her head in floating ends, and with
scanty and clinging array otherwise, tossing a tambourine, and singing
wild, meaningless songs, she used to whirl and spring on the grass-plot
of an evening, the young masters and mistresses smiling and applauding
from the verandah, while the wind-blown flame of a flaring pitch-pine
knot, held by little Pluto, gave her strange careering shadows for
partner.
She had not yet been allotted to any particular task by day, now running
errands of the house, now tending the sick, now, in punishment of
misdemeanors, relieving an exhausted hand in the field,--for, though all
along the upland lay the piny woods of the turpentine-orchards, she
belonged to an estate whose rich lowlands were devoted to
cotton-bearing. But whatever she did by day, she danced by night, with
her wild gyration and gesture, as naturally as a moth flies; and when
not in demand with the seigniory, was wont to perform in even keener
force and fire at the quarters, to an admiring circle of her own kind,
with ambitious imitators on the outskirts.
It was not, however, an indiscriminate assemblage even there that
encouraged her rude art. There are circles within circles, and the more
decorous of the slaves gave small favor to the young posturer, although
the patronage she received from the house enabled her to meet their
disapprobation defiantly; while to the younger portion, in the vague
sense that there was something wrong about it, her dance became
surrounded by all the attraction and allurement of seeing life. It was
not that the frowning ones did not go through many of the same motions
themselves; but theirs were occasioned by the frenzy of the religious
excitement, where pious rapture and ecstasy were to be expressed by
nothing but the bodily exertion of the Shout: the objectless dance of
the dancer was a thing beyond their comprehension, dimly at first, and
then positively, associated with sin. But she laughed them down with a
gibe; she felt triumphant in the possession of her secret, known to none
of them: her dance was not objectless, but the perpetual expression of
all emotions, whether of beauty or joy or gratitude or praise. Some one
at the house had given her a pair of little hoops with bells attached,
which she was wont to wear about her ankles, and it afforded her
malicious enjoyment to scatter her opponents by the tintinnabulation of
her step. For all that levity, she was not destitute of her peculiar
mode of adoration. For the religion of the Shout she had no absorbents
whatever; she furtively watched it, and openly ridiculed it; but she had
a religion of her own, notwithstanding,--a sort of primitive and grand
religion, Fetich though it was. She reasoned, that the kindly brown
earth produces us, bears us along on its flight, nourishes us, gives us
the delights of life, takes us back into its bosom at last. She
worshipped the great dark earth, imparted to it her confidence, asked of
it her boons. As she grew older, and her logic or her fancy
strengthened, she might have felt the sun supplying the earth, and the
beings of the earth, with all their force, and have become a
fire-worshipper, until further light broke on her, and she sought and
found the Power that feeds the very sun himself. But at present the dust
of which she was made was what she could best comprehend. So, fortified
by her inward faith, and feeling herself fast friends with the ancient
earth, she continued to ring her silver bells and spin her bare
twinkling feet with contented disregard of those, few of whom in their
unseemly worship had the faintest idea of what it was that ailed them.
Although known by various titles on the plantation, objurgatory among
the hands, facetious among the heads, such as Dancing Devil, Spinning
Jenny, Tarantella, Herodias's Daughter,--which last, simplifying itself
into Salome, became in its diminutives the most prevalent,--the creature
had a name of her own, the softest of syllables. Black and uncouth as
she was, a word, one of those the whitest and most beautiful, named her;
and since they tell us that every appellation has its significance for
the wearer, we must suppose that somewhere in her soul that white and
blossoming thing was to be found which answered to the name of Flor.
She possessed a kind of freehold in the cabin of an old negress yclept
Zoe; but she seldom claimed it, for Zoe was outspoken; she preferred,
instead, to lie down by night on a mat in Miss Emma's room, in a corner
of the staircase, on the hall-floor, oftenest fallen wherever sleep
happened to overtake her;--having so many places in which to lay her
head was very like having none at all. She was at the bidding of every
one, but seldom received a heavy blow; as for a round of angry words,
she liked nothing better. She fell heir to much flimsy finery, as a
matter of course, and to many a tidbit, cake or sweetmeat; she made
herself gaudy as a butterfly with the one, and never went into a corner
with the other. Of late, however, the finery and the delicates had
become more uncommon things: Miss Emma wore a homespun gingham, her
muslins, and Miss Agatha's, draped the windows,--for curtains and
carpets had all gone to camp; bacon had ceased to be given out to the
hands, who lived now on corn-meal and yams; the people at the house were
scarcely better off,--for, though, as no army had passed that way, the
chickens still peopled the place, they were reserved for special
occasions, and it was only at rare intervals that one indulged at table
in the luxury of a fowl. This was no serious regret to Flor on her own
account: the less viands, the less dishes, she could oftener pause in
the act of wiping a plate and perform an original hornpipe by herself,
tossing the thin translucent china, and rapping it with her knuckles
till it rang again. She had, however, a pang once when she saw Miss
Emma lunching with relish on cold sweet potato. She spent all the rest
of the day floating on the tide in an old abandoned scow secured by a
long rope to the bank, and afterwards wading up and down the bed of a
brook that ran into the river, until, having left a portion of her
provision, to be sure, at Aunt Zoe's cabin, she busied herself over a
fire out-of-doors, and served up at last before Miss Emma as savory a
little terrapin stew as ever simmered on coals, capering over her
success, and standing on her head in the midst of all her scattered
embers, afterwards, with pure delight. The next day she came in at noon
from the woods, a mile down the river-bank, with her own dark lips cased
and coated in golden sweets, and, after a wordy skirmish with the cook,
presented to Miss Emma a great cake of brown and fragrant honey from a
nest she had discovered and neglected in better seasons, and said
nothing about her half-dozen swollen and smarting stings. Mas'r Rob
having shouldered his gun and taken himself off, and Mas'r Andersen
having followed his example, but not his footsteps, long ago, there was
nobody to fill the deficiencies of the larder with game; and thus Flor,
with her traps and nets and devices, making her value felt every day,
became, for Miss Emma's sake, a petted person, was put on more generous
terms with those above her, and allowed a freedom of action that no
other servant on the place dreamed of desiring. Such consideration was
very acceptable to the girl, who was well content to go fasting herself
a whole day, provided Miss Emma condescended to her offerings, and, in
turn, vouchsafed her her friendship. She had no such daring aspirations
towards the beautiful Miss Agatha, young Mas'r Andersen's wife, and
admired her at an awful distance, never venturing to offer her a bit of
broiled lark, or set before her a dish of crabs,--beaming back with a
grin from ear to ear, if Miss Agatha so much as smiled on her, breaking
into the wildest of dances and shuffling out the shrillest of tunes
after every such incident. Moreover, Miss Agatha was hedged about with a
dignity of grief, and the indistinct pity given her made her safe from
other intrusion; for Mas'r Andersen, in bringing home a Northern wife,
had brought home Northern principles, and, in his sudden escape forced
to leave her in the only home she had, was away fighting Northern
battles. This was a dreadful thing, and Mas'r Andersen was a traitor to
somebody,--so much Flor knew,--it might be the Government, it might be
the South, it might be Miss Agatha; her ideas were nebulous. Whatever it
was, Mas'r Rob and his gun were on the other side, and woe be to Mas'r
Andersen when they met! Mas'r Rob and his friends were beating back the
men that meant to take away Flor and all her kind to freeze and starve;
'twas very good of him, Flor thought, and there ceased consideration.
Meanwhile, wherever Mas'r Andersen might be, and whether he were so much
as alive or not, Miss Agatha was not the one that knew; and Flor adapted
many a rigadoon to her conjectured feelings, now swaying and bending
with sorrow and longing, head fallen, arms outstretched, now hands
clasped on bosom, exultant in welcome and possession.
The importance to which Flor gradually rose by no means led her to the
exhibition of any greater decorum; on the contrary, it seemed to impart
to her the secret of perpetual motion; and, aware of her impunity, she
danced with fresher vigor in the very teeth of her censurers and their
reproaches.
"Go 'long wid yer capers, ye Limb!" said Zoe to her, late one afternoon,
as she entered with the half of a rabbit she had caught, and, having
deposited it, went through the intricacies of her most elaborate figure
in breathless listening to an unheard tune. "Ef I had dem sticks o'
legs, dey'd do berrer work nor twirlin' me like I was a factotum."
At this, Flor suddenly spun about on the tip of one toe for the space of
three minutes, with a buzzing noise like that of a top in hot motion,
pausing at last to inquire, "Well, Maum Zoe, an' w'at's dat?" and be
off again in another whirl.
"I'd red Mas'r Henry ob sich a wurfless nigger."
"Wurfless?" inquired Flor, still spinning.
"Wuss 'n wurfless."
"How 'd y' do it?"
"I'd jus' foller dat ar Sarp," said Zoe, turning over the rabbit, and
considering whether a pepper-corn and a little onion out of her own
patch wouldn't improve the broth she meant to make of it.
"Into de swamps?" said Flor, in a high key. "Sarp's a fool. I heerd
Mas'r Henry say so. Dey'll gib him a blue-pill, for sartain."
"Humph!" said Aunt Zoe, as if she could say a great deal more.
"Tell ye w'at, Maum Zoe," replied Flor, shaking her sidelong head at
every syllable, and accentuating her remarks with her forefinger and
both her little sparkling eyes, "I'll 'form on ye for 'ticin' Mas'r
Henry's niggers run away."
"None o' yer sass here!" said Maum Zoe, with a flashing glance.
"You take my rabbit, you mus' _hab_ my sass," answered Flor, delicacy
not being ingrain with her. "W'at 'ud I cut for to de swamps, d' ye
s'pose?" she said, slapping the soles of her feet in her emphasis, and
pausing for breath. "Dar neber was a lash laid on dat back"----
"No fault o' dat back, dough," interposed Aunt Zoe.
"Dar neber was a lash on dat back. Dar a'n't a person on de place hab
sich treatem as dis yere Limb o' yourn. Miss Emma done gib me her red
ribbins on'y Sa'd'y for my har. An' Mas'r Henry, he jus' pass an' say to
me, 'Dono w'at Miss Emma 'd do widout ye, Lomy. Scairt, ye hussy!' So!"
"'Zackly. We's 'mos' w'ite, we be! How much dey do make ob us up to de
house! De leopard hab change him spots, an' we hab change our skin! W'at
's de use o' bein' free, w'en we's w'ite folks a'ready? Tell me dat!"
said Aunt Zoe, turning on her witheringly, rising from a deep curtsy and
smoothing down her apron. "Tell ye w'at, ye Debil's spinster!" added
she, with a sudden change of tone, as Flor began to mimic one of Miss
Agatha's opera-tunes and with her hands on her hips slowly balance up
and down the room, and came at last, bending far on one side, to leer up
in the face of her elder with such a smile as Cubas was wont to give her
Spanish lover in the dance. "So mighty free wid yer dancin', 'pears like
you'll come to dance at a rope's end! W'at's de use o' talkin' to you?
'Mortal sperit, it 's my b'lief dat ar mockin'-bird in de branches hab
as good a lookout!"
"Heap better," said Flor acquiescently, and beginning to hold a
whistling colloquy with the hidden voice.
"You won't bring him down wid yer tunes. He knows w'en he's well off;
he's free, he is,--swingin' onto de bough, an' 'gwine whar he like."
"Leet de chil' alone, Zoe," said a superannuated old woman sitting in
the corner by the fire always smouldering on Zoe's hearth, and leaning
her white head on her cane. "You be berrer showin' her her duty in her
place dan be makin' her discontented."
"She doan' make me disconnected, Maum Susie," said Flor. "'F he's free,
w'at's he stayin' here for? Dar 's law for dat. Doan' want none o' yer
free niggers hangin' roun' dis yere. Chirrup!"
"Dar's a right smart chance ob 'em, dough, jus' now," said Aunt Zoe,
chuckling at first, and then breaking into the most boisterous of
laughs, "Seems like we's all ob us, ebery one, free as Sarp hisse'f.
Mas'r Linkum say so. Yah, ha, ha!"
"Linkum!" said Flor. "Who dat ar? Some o' yer poor w'ite trash? Mas'r
Henry doan' say so!"
"W'a' 's de matter wid dat ar boy Sarp, Zoe?" recommenced Flor, after a
pause. "Mus' hab wanted suffin,--powerful,--to lib in de swamp, hab de
dogs after him, an' a bullet troo de head mos' likely."
"Jus' dat. Wanted him freedom," said Zoe suddenly, with crackling
stress, her eyes getting angry in their fervor, as she went on. "Wanted
him body for him own. Tired o' usin' 'noder man's eyes, 'noder man's
han's. Wanted him han's him own, wanted him heart him own! Had n' no
breff to breathe 'cep' w'at Mas'r Henry gib out. Di'n' t'ink no t'oughts
but Mas'r Henry's. Wanted him wife some day to hisse'f, wanted him
chillen for him own property. Wanted to call no man mas'r but de Lord in
heaben!"
"Wy, Maum Zoe, how you talk! Sarp had n' no wife."
"Neber would, w'ile he wor a slave."
"Hist now, Zoe!" said the old woman.
"I jus' done b'lieve you's a bobolitionist!" said Flor, with wide eyes
and a battery of nods.
"No 'casion, no 'casion," said Zoe, with the deep inner chuckle again.
"We's done 'bolished,--dat's w'at we is! We's a free people now. No more
work for de 'bominationists!" And on the point of uncontrollable
hilarity, she checked herself with the dignity becoming her new
position. "You's your own nigger now, Salome," said she.
"We? No, t'ank you. I 'longs to Miss Emma."
"You haan' no understandin' for liberty, chil'. Seems ef 'twas like
religion"----
"Ef I wor to tell Mas'r Henry, oh, wouldn' you cotch it?"
"Go 'long!" cried Zoe, looking out for a missile. "Doan' ye bring no
more o' yer rabbits here, ef ye 'r' gwine to fetch an' carry"----
"Lors, Aunt Zoe, 'pears like you's out o' sorts. Haan' I got nof'n
berrer to do dan be tellin' tales ob old women dat's a-waitin' for de
Lord's salvation?" said Flor, with a twang of great gravity,--and
proceeded thereat to make her exit in a series of lively somersaults
through the room and over the threshold.
Aunt Zoe, who, ever since she had lost the use of her feet, had been a
little wild on the subject of freedom, knew very well within that Flor
would make no mischief for her; but, except for the excited state into
which the news brought by some mysterious plantation runner had thrown
her, she would scarcely have been so incautious. As it was, she had
dropped a thought into Flor's head to ferment there and do its work. It
was almost the first time in her life that the girl had heard freedom
discussed as anything but a doubtful privilege. First awakening to
consciousness in this state, it was with effort and only lately she had
comprehended that there could be any other: a different condition from
one in which Miss Emma was mistress and she was maid seemed at first
preposterous, then fabulous, and still unnatural: nevertheless, there
was a flavor of wicked pleasure in the thought. Flor looked with a sort
of contempt on the little tumbling darkies who had never entertained it.
Ever since she was born, however, she had frequently fancied she would
like the liberty of rambling that the little wild creatures of the wood
possess, but had felt criminal in the desire, and recently she had found
herself enjoying the immunity of the mocking-bird on the bough, and was
nearly as free in her going and coming as the same bird on the wing.
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