The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

During the weeks that followed this conversation Flor's dances flagged.
They existed, to be sure, but with an angularity that made them seem
solutions of problems, rather than expressions of emotion; they were
merely mechanical, for she had lost all interest in them. They became at
last so listless as to exhibit, to more serious eyes, signs of grace in
the girl. Flor wondered, if Zoe had spoken the truth, that nothing
appeared changed on the plantation: all their own masters, why so
obsequious to the driver still? This was one of the last of the great
places; behind it, the small farms, with few hands, ran up the
mountains; why was there no stampede of these unguarded slaves? She
hardly understood. She listened outside the circle of the fire on the
ground at night, where two or three old women mumbled together; she
inferred, that, though no one of them would desert Mas'r Henry, they
enjoyed the knowledge that they were at liberty to do so, if they
wished. Flor laughed a bit at this, thinking where the poor things could
possibly go, and how they could get there, if they would; but in her
heart of hearts--though all the world but this one spot was a barren
wilderness, and she never could desire to leave her dear Miss Emma, nor
could find happiness away from her--it seemed a very pleasant thing to
think that her devotion might be a voluntary affair, and she stayed
because she chose. Still she was skeptical. The abstract question
puzzled her a little, too. How came Mas'r Henry to be free? Because he
was white; that explained itself. But Miss Emma--she was white, too, and
yet somehow she seemed to belong to Mas'r Henry. She wondered if Mas'r
Henry could sell Miss Emma; and then the thought occurred, and with the
thought the fear, that, possibly, some day, he might sell her, Flor
herself, away from Miss Emma and all these pleasant scenes. After such a
thought had once come, it did not go readily. Flor let it
linger,--turned it over in her mind; gradually familiarized with its
hurt, it seemed as if she had half said farewell to the place. Better
far to be a runaway than to be sold. But if it came to that, whither
should she run? what was this world beyond? who was there in this sad
wide world to take care of a little black image? And if she waited for
it to come to that, could she get away at all? It was no wonder that in
the midst of such new and grave speculations the girl's dance grew
languid and her sharp tongue still. The earth was just as beautiful as
ever, the skies were as deep, the flowers as intense in tint, the
evening air laden with jasmine-scents as delicious as of old; but in
these few weeks Flor had reached another standpoint. It seemed as if a
film had fallen from her eyes, and she saw a blight on every blossom.

It was about this time, spring being at its flush, that some passing
guest mentioned the march of a regiment, the next day, from Cotesworth
Court-House to the first railroad-station, on its way to the seat of
war. The idea of the thing filled Miss Emma with enthusiasm. How they
would look, so many together, in the beautiful gray uniform too, to any
one standing on Longfer Hill! She longed to see the faces of men when
they took their lives in their hand for a principle. She had practised
the Bonny Blue Flag till there was nothing left of it; but if a band
played it in the open air, with the rising and falling of the wind, and
under waving banners and glittering guidons all the men with their pale
faces and shining eyes went marching by----

The end of it was, that, as her father would never have listened to
anything of the kind, Flor privately informed her of a short cut down
the river-bank and round the edge of the swamp to the foot of Longfer
Hill,--a walk they could easily take in a couple of hours. And as nobody
was in the habit of missing Flor much, and her young mistress would be
supposed, after her custom, to be spending half the day in naps, they
accordingly took it. Nevertheless, it was an exceedingly secret affair,
for Mas'r Henry had always strictly forbidden his daughter to leave his
own grounds without fit escort.

This expedition seemed to Flor such a proud and gratifying confidence,
that in her pleasure she forgot to think; she only danced round about
her mistress, with a return of her old exuberance, till the more quiet
path of the latter resembled a straight line surrounded by an arabesque
of fantastic flourishes. But, in fact, the young patrician, unaccustomed
to exertion, was well wearied before they reached the river-bank. They
had yet the long border of the swamp to skirt, and there towered Longfer
Hill. Why could they not go across, she wondered. They would sink, Flor
answered her; and then the moccasins! But there were all those green
hummocks,--skipping from one to another would be mere play,--and there
were no moccasins for miles. And before Flor could gainsay her, she had
sprung on, keeping steadily ahead, in a determination to have her own
way; and with no other course left her, Flor followed, though, at every
spring, alighting on the hummocks that Miss Emma had trodden, the water
splashed up about her bare ankles, and her heart shook within her at the
thought of fierce runaways haunting these inaccessible hollows, and the
myths of the deeper district. Before long, she had overtaken her young
mistress, and they paused a moment for parley. Miss Emma was convinced,
that, if it were no worse than this, it would be delightful. Flor
assured her that she did not know the way any longer, for their winding
path between the tall cypresses veiled in their swinging tangles of
funereal moss had confused her, and she could only guess at the
direction of Longfer Hill. This, then, was an adventure. Miss Emma took
the responsibility all upon herself, and plunged forward. Miss Emma must
know best, of course, concerning everything. Nothing loth, and gayly,
Flor plunged after.

The hummocks on which they went were light, spongy masses of greenery.
Their footprints filled at once behind them with clear dark water; there
were glistening little pools everywhere about them; the ground was so
covered with mats of brilliant blossoms that what appeared solid for the
foot was oftenest the most treacherous place of all; and at last they
stayed to take breath, planting themselves on the trunk of a fallen tree
so twisted and twined with variegated vines and flowers, and deadly,
damp fungi, that it was like some gorgeous dais-seat. Behind them and
beside them was the darkness of the cypress groves. Before them extended
a smooth floor, a wide level region, carpeted in the most vivid verdure
and sheeted with the sunshine, an immense bed of softest moss, underlaid
with black bog, quaking at every step, and shaking a thousand diamonds
into the light. Scarcely anything stirred through all the stretch; at
some runnel along its nearer margin, where upon one side the more broken
swamp recommenced, a rosy flamingo stood and fished, and, still remoter,
the melancholy note of a bird tolled its refrain, answered by an echoing
voice from some yet inner depth of forest far away. Save for this, the
silence was as intense as the vastness and color of the scene, till it
opened and resolved itself into one broad insect hum. The children took
a couple of steps forward, under their feet the elastic sod sank and
rose with a spurt of silver jets; they sprang back to their seats, and
the shading tree above shook down a shining shower in rillets of silver
rain. They remained for a minute, then, resting there. Singularly
enough, Longfer Hill, which had previously been upon their left, now
rose far away upon the right. When at length they comprehended its
apparition, they looked at one another in complete bewilderment. Miss
Emma began to cry; but Flor took it as only a fresh complication of this
world, that was becoming for her feet a maze of intricacy.

"We must go back," said Miss Emma, at last. "I'm sure, if I'd
known----Of course we never can cross here. The very spoonbill wades.
Oh, why didn't----Well, there's no blame to you, Floss. I've nobody to
thank but myself; that's a comfort."

"Lors, Miss Emma, it's my fault altogeder. I should n' neber told ye.
An' as for gwine back, it's jus' as bad as torrer."

"We can't stay here all night! Oh, I'm right tired out! If I could lie
down"----

"'Twouldn' do no way, Miss Emma," answered Flor, in a fright for her
friend, as a quick, poisonous-looking lizard slid along the log, like a
streak of light, in the wake of a spider which was one blotch of scarlet
venom.

Far ahead, the strong sun, piercing the marsh, drew up a vapor, that,
blue as any distant haze in one part and lint-white in another, made
itself aslant into low, delicious, broken prisms, melting all between.
This, more than anything else, told the extent of the bog before them,
and, hot as it was now, betrayed the deathly chill lurking under such a
coverlet at night. In every other direction lay the cypress jungle; and
whether they saw the front or back of Longfer Hill, and on which side
the river ran, steering for which they could steer for home, they had
not the skill to say. Thus, what way to go they still were undecided,
when, at something moving near them, they started to their feet in a
faint terror, delaying only a single instant to gaze at it,--a serpent,
that, coiled round the stem above, had previously seemed nothing but a
splendid parasite, and that just lifted its hooded head crusted with
gems, and flickered a long cleft tongue of flame over them, while
loosening in great loops from its basking-place. They vouchsafed it no
second look, but, with one leap over the log, through the black mire,
and from clump to clump of moss, sped away,--if that could be called
speed which was hindered at each moment by waylaying briers and
entangling ropes of blossoming vines, by delays in threatening quagmires
and bewilderments in thickets beset by clouds of insects, by trips and
stumbles and falls and bruises, and many a pause for tears and
complaints and ejaculations of despair.

Meanwhile the heat of the day was mitigated by thin clouds sliding over
the sun and banking up the horizon, though the hot wind still blew
sweetly and steadily from the open quarter of the sky.

"Oh, what has become of us?" cried Miss Emma at length, when the shadows
began to thicken, and out of the impenetrable forest and morass about
them they could detect no path.

"We's los' into de swamp, Miss Emma," answered Flor, in a kind of gloomy
defiance of the worst of it,--"da' 's all."

"And here we shall die!" cried the other.

And she flung herself, face down, upon the floor.

Flor was beside her instantly, taking her head upon her knee. Her own
heart was sinking like lead; but she plucked it up, and for the other's
sake snapped her fingers at Fortune.

"Lors, Miss, dar's so many berries we caan' starve nowes. I's 'bout to
build a fire soon's it's dark; dis yere's a dry spot, ye see now. An',
bress you, dey'll be out after us afore mornin',--de whole farm-full."

"With the dogs!" cried Miss Emma. "Oh, Floss, that I should live for
that! to be hunted in the swamp with dogs!"

Flor was silent a moment or two. The custom personally affected her for
the first time; worse than the barbarity was the indignity.

"Dey aren't trained to hunt for you, Miss Emma," she said, more gloomily
than she had ever spoken before. "Dey knows de diff'unce 'tween de dark
meat and de light."

And then she laughed, as if her words meant nothing.

"They never shall touch _you_, Flor, while I'm alive!" suddenly
exclaimed Miss Emma, throwing her arms about her.

"Lors, Miss, how you talk!" cried Flor, and then broke into a gust of
tears. "To t'ink ob you a-carin' so much for a little darky, Miss!"--and
she set up a loud howl of joyful sorrow.

"You're the best friend I've got!" answered Miss Emma, hugging her with
renewed warmth. "I love you worlds better than Agatha! And I'll never
let you leave me! Oh, Flor! what shall we do?"

Flor looked about her for reply, and then scrambled up a sycamore like a
squirrel.

It was apparently an island in the swamp on which they were: for the
earth, though damp, was firm beneath them; and there was a thick growth
of various trees about, although most were draped to the ground in the
long, dark tresses of Spanish moss, waving dismally to and fro, with a
dull, heavy motion of grief. On every other side from that by which they
had come it appeared to be inaccessible, surrounded, as well as Flor
could see, by glimmering sheets of water, which probably were too full
of snags and broken stumps, still upright, for the navigation of boats
by any hands but those thoroughly acquainted with their wide region of
stagnant pools. This island was not, however, a small spot, but one that
comprised a variety of surfaces, having not only marsh and upland within
itself, but something that in the distance bore a fearful resemblance to
a young patch of standing corn, a suspicion confirmed into certainty by
a blue thread of smoke ascending a little way and falling again in a
cloud. Once, upon seeing such a sight, Flor might have fallen to the
ground herself,--this could be no less than the abode of those sad
runaways, those mythical Goblins of the Swamp,--but it would have been
because she had forgotten then that she was not one of the strong white
race that reared her. Now, at this moment, she felt a thrill of kinship
with these creatures, hunted for with bloodhounds, as she would be
to-morrow, perhaps.

"May-be I'll not go back," said Flor.

She slipped down the tree, and went silently to work, heaping a bed of
the hanging moss, less wet than the ground itself, for her young
mistress. Miss Emma accepted it passively.

"Oh, it's like sleeping on hearse-curtains!" was all she said.

It was already evening, but growing darker with the clouds that went on
piling their purple masses and awaiting their signal. Suddenly the
sweet, soft breeze trembled and veered, there was a brief calm, and the
wind had hauled round the other way. A silence of preparation, answered
by a long, low note of thunder, and the war had begun in heaven.

Miss Emma buried her face in the moss. But Flor, secretly relishing a
good thunder-gust, drew up her knees and sat with equanimity, like a
little black judge of the clouds; for, in the moment's dull, indifferent
mood, she felt prepared for either fate. It was long before the rain
came; then it plunged, a brief downfall, as if a cloud had been ripped
and emptied,--a suffocating terror of rain, teeming with more appalling
intimations than anything else in the world. But the wind was a blind
tornado. The boughs swung over them and swept them; the swamp-water was
lifted, and gluts of it slapped in Flor's face. She saw, not far away, a
great solitary cypress rearing its head, and bearing aloft a broad
eagle's nest, hurriedly seized in the grasp of the gale, twisted,
raised, and snapped like a straw. The child began to shudder strangely
at the breath of this blast that cried with such clamor out of the black
vaults above, this unknown and tremendous power beneath which she was
nothing but a mote; she suffered an unexplained awe, as if this fearful
wind were some supernatural assemblage of souls fleeting through space
and making the earth tremble under their wild rush. All the while the
heavy thunders charged on high in one unbroken roar, across whose base
sharp bolts broke and burst perpetually; and with the outer world
wrapped in quivering curtains of blue flame, now and then a shaft of
fire lanced its straight spear down the dense darkness of the woods
behind in ghastly illumination, and a responsive spire shot up in some
burning bush that blackened almost as instantly. Flor fancied that the
lightning was searching for her, a runaway herself, and the burning bush
answered, like a sentinel, that here she was. She cowered at length and
sought the protection of the blind earth, full of awe and quaking, till
by-and-by the last discharge, muffled and ponderous, rolled away, and,
save for a muttered growl in some far distant den, the world was still
and dark again.

Flor spoke to her mistress, and found, that, utterly worn out with
fatigue and fright and exhausted electricity, she was asleep. She then
got up and wrung out the rain from portions of her own and Miss Emma's
dress, and heaped fresh armfuls of moss upon the sleeper in an original
attempt at the pack; then she proceeded to explore the neighborhood, to
see if there were any exit in other directions from the terrors of the
swamp.

Stars began to struggle through and confuse their rays with the
ravelled edges of the clouds. She groped along from tree to tree,
looking constantly behind her at the clear, light opening of sky beneath
which Miss Emma lay.

Perhaps she had come farther than she knew; for all at once, in the
dread stillness that nothing but the dripping dampness broke, a sound
smote her like a pang. It was an innocent and simple sound enough, a
man's voice, clear and sweet, though measured somewhat, and suppressed
in volume, chanting a slow, sad hymn, that had yet a kind of rejoicing
about it:--

"Oh, no longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt.
The Lord hath set him free!"

It came from a hollow below her. Flor pushed aside the great, glistening
leaves in silence, and looked tremblingly in. There were half-burnt
brands on a broad stone, throwing out an uncertain red glimmer; there
was an awning of plaited reeds reaching from bough to bough; there was
an old man stretched upon the ground, and a stalwart man sitting beside
him and chanting this song, as if it were a burial-service: for the old
man was dead.

Flor began to tremble again, with that instinctive animal antipathy to
death and dissolution. But in an instant a rekindling gleam of the
embers, hardly quenched, shot over the singer's face. In the same
instant Flor shook before the secret she had learned, Sarp was a
runaway, to be sure; and runaways ate little girls, she knew. But Flor,
having lately encouraged incredulity, could hardly find it in her heart
to believe that the fact of having stolen himself could have so utterly
changed the old nature of Sarp, the kind butler, who always had a
pleasant word for her when others had a cuff. Yet should she hail him?
Ah, no, never! But then--Miss Emma! Her young mistress would die of
starvation and the damp.

"Sarp!" whispered Flor, huskily.

The man started and sprang to his feet, alert and ready, waiting for his
unseen enemy,--then half relapsed, thinking it might be nothing but the
twitter of a bird.

"It's me, Sarp."

Who that was did not seem so plain to Sarp; he darted his swift glance
in her direction, then at one step parted the bushes and dragged her
through, as if it were game that he had trapped.

"Oh, Sarp!" cried Flor, falling at his feet. "Doan' yer kill me now! I
di'n' mean to ha' found yer. I's done los' in de swamp, wid"----

But Flor thought better of that.

The man raised her, but still held her out at arm's length, while he
listened for further sound behind her.

"Oh, jus' le' go, Sarp, an' I'll dance for you till I drap!" she cried.

"Is it a time for dancing," he replied, "and the earth open for
burying?"

"Lors, Sarp!" cried Flor, shrinking from the shallow grave she had not
seen, "how's I to know dat?"--and she gave herself safe distance.

"Help me yere, then," said he.

But Flor remained immovable, and Sarp was obliged to perform by himself
the last offices for the old slave, who, living out his term of
harassments and hungers, had grown gray and died in the swamps. He went
at last and brought an armful of broken sweet-flowering boughs and
spread them over the place.

"Free among the dead," he said; then turned to Flor, who, having long
since seen daylight through the darkness of her fears, proceeded glibly
and volubly to pour out her troubles, on his beckoning her away, and to
demand the help she had refused to render.

"There's the boat," said Sarp, reflectively. "And the rain will float it
'most anywheres to-night. But--come so far and troo so much to go back?"

Flor flung up her face and held her head back proudly.

"Yes, Sah! Doan' s'pose I'd be stealin' Mas'r Henry's niggers?"

For, having meditated upon it an hour ago, she was able to repel the
charge vigorously.

"Go'n' to stay a slave all your life?"

"All Miss Emma's life."

"And--afterwards"----

"Den I'll go back to de good brown earth wid her," said Flor, solving
the problem promptly.--"I doan' see de boat."

"Ah, she'll make as brown dust as you,--Miss Emma,--that's so! But the
spirit, Lome!"

"Sperit?" said Flor, looking uneasily over her shoulder with her
twinkling eyes.

"The part of you that doan' die, Lome."

"I haan' nof'n ter do wid dat; dat 'longs to dem as made it; none o' my
lookout; dono nof'n 'bout it, an' doan' want ter hear nof'n about it!"
said Flor; for, reasoning on the old adage of a bird in the hand being
worth two in the bush, she thought it more important just at present to
save her body than to save her soul, admitting that she had one, and
felt haste to be of more behoof than metaphysics.

There was a moon up now, and Flor could see her companion's dark face
above her, a mere mass of shade; it did not reassure her any to remember
that her own was just as black.

"Lome," said Sarp, setting his back against a tree like one determined
to have attention, "never mind about the boat yet. You 've heard Aunt
Zoe say how't the grace of the Lord was free?"

"Yes, I's heerd her kerwhoopin'. I 's in a hurry, Sarp!"

"But 's how't the man that refuses to accept it, when it's set before
him, is done reckoned a sinner?"

"S'pose I has?"--and in her impatience she began to dance outright.

"It's jus' so with the present hour," he continued, not giving her time
to interpose about escape again. "You have liberty offered you. If you
refuses, how can you answer for it when your spirit 'pears afore the
Judge? You choose him, and you choose righteousness, you chooses the
chance to make yourself white in the Lord's eyes,--your spirit, Lome.
Refuse, and you take sin and chains and darkness; you gets to deserve
the place where they hab their share of fire and brimstone."

"Take mine wid 'lasses," said Flor, who, though inwardly a trifle cowed,
never meant to show it. "W'a' 's de use o' boderin' 'bout all dat ar,
w'en dar 's Miss Emma a-cotchin' her deff, an' I 's jus' starved? Ef you
's go'n' to help us, Sarp"----

"You don' know what chains means, chil'," said the imperturbable Sarp.
"They're none the lighter because you can't see 'em. It a'n't jus' the
power to sell your body and the work of your hands; it's the power to
sell your soul! Ef Mas'r Henry hab de min',--ef Mas'r Henry have the
mind, I say, to make you go wrong, can you help it while you 's a
slave?"

"'Taan' no fault o' mine ter be bad, ef I caan' help it. Come now," said
Flor sullenly, seeing little hope of respite,--"should t'ink 'twas de
Ol' Sarpint hisself!"

"And 'taan' no virtue of yours to be good, ef you caan' help it; you 'd
jus' stay put--jus' between--in de brown earth, as you said. You 'd
never see that beautiful land beyond the grave, wid the river of light
flowing troo der place, an' the people singing songs before the great
white t'rone."

"Tell me 'bout dat ar, Sarp," said Flor, forgetfully.

"Dey 's all free there, Lome."

"How was dis dey got dere? Could n' walk nowes, an' could n' fly"----

"Haan' you seen into Miss Emma's prayer-book the angels with wings high
and shining all from head to foot?"

"Yes," said Flor,--"_Angels_."

"And one of them you 'll be, Lome, ef you jus' choose,--ef, for
instance, you choose liberty to-day."

"Lors now, Sarp, I doan' b'lieb a word you say! Get out wid yer
conundrums! Likely story, little black nigger like dis yere am be put
into de groun' an' 'come out all so great an' w'ite an' shinin'-like!"

"'For God shall deliver my soul from the power of the grave.'
_'Shall.'_ That's a promise,--a promise in the Book. Di'n't yer eber
plant a bean, Lome,--little hard black bean? And did a little hard black
bean come up? No, but two wings of leaves, and a white blossom jus'
ready to fly itself, and so sweet you could smell it acrost de field. So
they plant your body in the earth, Lome"----

"You go 'long, Sarp! Ef you plant beans, beans come up," said Flor,
decisively.

This direct and positive confutation rather nonplussed Sarp, his theory
not being able at once to assimilate his fact, and he himself feeling,
that, if he pushed the comparison farther, he would reach some such
atrocity as that, if the white and shining flower produced in its season
again the black bean from which it sprung, so the white and shining soul
must once more clothe itself in the same sordid, unpurified body from
which it first had sprung. He had a vague glimmer that perhaps his
simile was too material, and that this very body was the clay in which
the springing, germinating soul was planted to bloom out in heaven, but
dared not pursue it unadvised, for fear of the quicksands into which it
might betray him. He merely tied a knot in the thread of his discourse
by answering,--

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19