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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"Jus' so. The bean planted, the bean comes up. You planted, and what
follows?"
"I come up," said Flor, consentingly, and quite as if he had got the
better of the discussion.
Then he rose, and Flor led the way back to Miss Emma,--having first,
upon Sarp's serious hesitation, pledged herself for Miss Emma's secrecy
and gratitude with tears and asseverations.
In spite of the fact that he had never meant nor cared to see it again,
there was something pleasant to Sarp in the face of the sleeper upturned
in a moonbeam. He stooped and lifted her tenderly, and laid her head on
his shoulder. The young girl opened her eyes vacantly, but heard Flor's
voice beside her still,--
"Doan' ye be scaret now, honey! Bress you, 's a true frien': he'll get
us shet ob dis yere swamp mighty sudd'n!"
And soothed by the dreamy motion, entirely fatigued, borne swiftly along
in strong arms, under the low, waving boughs in the dim forest darkness,
she was drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being
placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than
before. Flor nodded triumphantly to her companion, in the beginning,
keeping pace beside him with short runs,--there could be no fear of
babble about that of which one knew nothing,--and took her seat at last
in the boat as he directed, while with a long pole he pushed out into
the deeper water away from the shadow of the shore, and then went
steering between the jags and gnarls, that, half protruding from the
dark expanses, seemed the heads of strange and preternatural monsters.
Now and then a current carried them; now and then their boatman sculled,
now and then in shallower places poled along; sometimes he rested, and
in the intervals took occasion to continue his missionary labor upon
Flor,--his first object being to convince her she had a soul, and his
second that in bondage every chance to save that soul alive was against
her. Then he drew slight pictures of a different way of things, such as
had solaced his own imagination, rude, but happy idyls of freedom: the
small house, one's own; the red light in the window, a guiding star for
weary feet at night coming home to comfort and smiles and cheer; no
dark, haunting fear of a hand to reach between one and those loved
dearest; no more branding like cattle, manhood and womanhood
acknowledged, met with help and welcome and kind hands, cringing no
more, but standing erect, drinking God's free sunshine, and growing
nearer heaven. How much or how little of all his dream poor Sarp
realized, if ever he reached the land of his desire at all, Heaven only
knows. But Flor listened to him as if he recited some delightful
fairy-tale,--charming indeed, but all as improbable as though one were
telling her that black was white. Then, too, there was another dream of
Sarp's,--the dream of a whole race loosening itself from the clinging
clod. Flor got a glimmer of his meaning,--only a glimmer; it made her
heart beat faster, but it was so grand she liked the other best.
So, creeping through narrow creeks, now they skirted the edges of the
long, low, flat morass,--now wound round the giant trunk of a fallen
tree that nearly bridged the pool whose dark mantle they severed,--now
pushed the boat's head up into a wall of weeds, that bent back and let
it through the deep cut flooded by the rain, where the wild growth shut
off everything but the high hollow of a luminous sky, with
ribbon-grasses and long prickly leaves brushing across their faces from
either side, here and there a sudden dwarf palmetto bristling all its
bayonets against the peaceful night, and all the way singular uncouth
shapes of vegetation, like conjurations of magic, cutting themselves out
with minuteness upon the vast clear background so darkly and weirdly
that the voyagers seemed to be sliding along the shores of some new,
strange under-world,--now they got out, and, wading ankle-deep in plashy
bog, drew the boat and its slumberer heavily after them,--now went
slowly along, afloat again, on the broad lagoons, which the moon, from
the deep far heaven, shot into silver reaches, and, with the trees, a
phantom company of shadows, weeping in their veils along the farther
shore, with all the quaint outlines of darkness, the gauzy wings that
flitted by, the sweet, wild scents across whose lingering current they
drifted, the broad silence disturbed only by the lazy wash of a seldom
ripple, made their progress, through heavy gloom and vivid light, an
enchanted journey.
At length they lifted overhanging branches, and glided out upon a sheet
of open water, a little lake fed by natural springs; and here, paddling
over to the outlet, a tide took them down a swift brook to the river.
Sarp stemmed this tide, made the opposite bank of the brook, and paused.
"Have you chosen, Lome?" said he. "Will you go back with me, and so on
to the Happy Land of Freedom? Not that I'll have my own liberty till
I've earned it,--till I've won a country by fighting for it. But I'll
see you safe; and if I'm spared, one day I'll come to you. Will you go?"
Flor hung back a moment. "I'd like to go, Sarp, right well," said she,
twisting up the corner of her little tatter of an apron. "But dar am
Miss Emma, you see."
"We can leave her on the bank here. She'll be all right when de day
breaks, and fin' the house herself. There's as good as she without a
roof this night."
"She's neber been use' to it. She would n' know a step o' de way. Oh,
no, Sarp! I 'longs to Miss Emma; she could n' do widout me. She'd jus'
done cry her eyes out an' die,--'way here in de wood. No, Sarp, I mus'
take her back. She's delicate, Miss Emma is. I'd like to go right well,
Sarp,--'ta'n't much ob a 'sapp'intment,--I's use' to 'em,--I'd like for
to go wid you."
Lingering, irresolute, she stood up in the swaying skiff, keeping her
balance as if she were dancing; then, the motion, perhaps, throwing her
back into her old identity, she sprang to the shore like a cat. Sarp
laid Miss Emma beside her, and then shot away, back over all the
desolate reaches and lonely shining pools; and Flor, with a little wail
of despair, hid her face on the ground, that her weakened and bewildered
little mistress might not see the flood of tears that wet the grass
beneath it.
It was between two and three o'clock in the morning, when, chilled,
draggled, and dripping wet, they reached the house. Lights were moving
everywhere about it: no one had slept there that night. There was a
great shout from high and low as the two forlorn little objects crept
into the ray. Miss Emma was met with severe reproaches, afterwards with
tears and embraces; and cordial drinks and hot flannels were made ready
for her in a trice. As for Flor, she was warmed after another
fashion,--being sent off for punishment; and, in spite of the
implorations of Miss Emma and the interference of Miss Agatha, the order
was executed. It was the first time she had ever received such reward of
merit in form; and though it was a slight affair, after all, the hurt
and wrong rankled for weeks, and, instead of the gay, dancing imp of
former days, henceforth a silent, sullen shadow slipped about and
haunted all the dark places of the house.
Mas'r Henry, being a native of Charleston, was also a gentleman of
culture, and fond of the fine arts to some extent. Indeed, looking at it
in a poetical view, the feudality of slavery, even more than the
inevitable relation of property, was his strong tie to the institution.
He had a contempt for modern progress so deeply at the root of his
opinions that he was only half aware of it; and any impossible scheme to
restore the political condition of what we call the Dark Ages, and
retain the comforts of the present one, would have found in him a hearty
advocate. One of his favorite books was a little green-covered volume,
printed on coarse paper, and smelling of the sea which it had crossed: a
book that seemed to bring one period of those past centuries up like a
pageant,--so vividly, with all the flying dust of their struggle in the
sunbeam before him, did its opulent vitality reproduce, in their
splendors and their sins, the actual presences of those dead men and
women, now more unreal substance than the dust of their shrouds. He
liked to carry this mediaeval Iliad round with him, and, taking it out
at propitious places, go jotting his pencil down the page. He had heard
it called an incomprehensible puzzle of poetry; it gave him pleasure,
then, to unriddle and proclaim it plain as print. He was thus
delectating himself one day, while Flor, still in her phase of
moodiness, stood behind Miss Agatha's chair; and, the passage pleasing
him, he read it aloud to Miss Agatha, whom, in the absence of his son,
her husband, he was wont to consider his opponent in the abstract,
however dear and precious in the concrete.
"As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit
Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot,
Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy, black,
Enormous watercourse which guides him back
To his own tribe again, where he is king;
And laughs, because he guesses, numbering
The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch
Of the first lizard wrested from its couch
Under the slime, (whose skin, the while, he strips
To cure his nostril with, and festered lip,
And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert blast,)
That he has reached its boundary, at last
May breathe; thinks o'er enchantments of the South,
Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth,
Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried
In fancy, puts them soberly aside
For truth, projects a cool return with friends,
The likelihood of winning mere amends
Erelong; thinks that, takes comfort silently,
Then from the river's brink his wrongs and he,
Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon
Offstriding to the Mountains of the Moon."
Flor stood listening, with eyes that shone strangely out of the gloom of
her face.
"Well, child," said her master to Miss Agatha, "how does that little
monodrame strike you? Which do you find preferable, tell me, Ashantee at
home or Ashantee abroad? civilized or barbarized? the institution or the
savage? Eh, Blossom," turning to Flor, "what do you think of the
condition of that ancestor of yours?"
"Mas'r Henry," said Flor, gravely, "he was free."
"Eh? Free? What! are you bitten, too?"
And Mas'r Henry laughed at the thought, and pictured to himself his
dancer dancing off altogether, like the swamp-fire she was. Then his
tone changed.
"Flor," said he, sternly, "who has been talking to you lately? Do you
know, Agatha? I have seen this for some time. I must learn what one
among the hands it is that in these times dares breed disaffection."
"No one's talked to me, Sah," said Flor,--"no one onter der place."
"Some one off of it, then."
"Mas'r Henry, I's been havin' my own t'oughts. Mas'r knows I could n'
lebe Miss Emma nowes. Could n' tief her property nowes. But ef Mas'r
Henry 'd on'y jus' 'sider an' ask li'l' Missy for to make dis chil' a
presen' ob myse'f"----
"So that's what it means!" And Mas'r Henry smiled a moment at the
ludicrous idea presented to him.
"Flor," said he then, abruptly, "I have never heard the whole of that
night in the swamp. It must be told."
"Lors, Sah! So long ago, I's done forgot it!"
"You may have till to-morrow morning to quicken your memory."
"Haan' nof'n' more to 'member, Mas'r."
"You heard me. You have your choice to repeat it either now or to-morrow
morning."
"Could n' make suf'n', whar nof'n' was. Could n' tink o' nof'n' all ter
once. Could n' tell nof'n' at all in a hurry," said Flor, with a
twinkle. "Guess I'll take tell de mornin', any-wes, Mas'r." And she was
off.
And Mas'r Henry went, back to his book,--the watcher nodding on his
spear,--and all the stormy scenes he expected soon to realize in his own
life, when the sword of conscription had numbered his old head with the
others.
Flor went out from the presence defiant, as became a rebel.
Although that special mode of martyrdom was not proper to the
plantation, and Flor felt in herself few particles of the stuff of which
martyrs are made, she was determined, that, as to telling so much as
that Sarp was still in the swamp, let alone betraying the way to his
late habitat,--even were she able,--she never would do it, though burned
at the stake. The determination had a dark look; nevertheless, two
glimmers lighted it: one was the hope, in a mistrust of her own
strength, that Sarp had already gone; the other was a perception that
the best way to keep Sarp's secret was to make off with it. She began to
question what authority Mas'r Henry had to demand this secret from her;
she answered in her own mind, that he had no authority at all;--then she
was doubly determined that he should not have it. She had heard talk of
chivalry at table and among guests; she had half a comprehension of what
it meant; she wondered if this were not a case in point,--if it were,
after all, the color, and not the sex, that weighed. That aroused her
indignation, aroused also a feeling of race: she would not have changed
color that moment with the fairest Circassian of a harem, could the
white slave have appeared in all the dazzle of her beauty.--Mas'r Henry
had called that man, of whom he read aloud to-day, her ancestor. She
knew what that was, for she had heard Miss Emma boast of her
progenitors. But he was free; then it followed that she was not a slave
by nature, only by vicious force of circumstance. Mas'r Henry had no
right to her whatever; instead of her stealing herself, he was the thief
who retained her against her will. What could be the name of the country
where that man had lived? It was somewhere a long way from this place,
down the river, perhaps beyond the sea;--there were others there, then,
still, most likely. Flor had an idea that among them she might be a
superior, possibly received with welcome, invested with honors;--she
lingered over the pleasant vision. But how was one ever to find the
spot? Ah, that book of Mas'r Henry's would tell, if she could but take
it away to those kind people Sarp had told of. So she meditated awhile
on the curious travels with Sordello for a guide-book, till old
affections smote her for having thought of taking the thing, when "Mas'r
Henry set so by it," and she put the vision aside, endeavoring to recall
in its place all that Sarp had told her of the North. She realized then,
personally, what a wide world it was. Why should she stay shut in this
one point upon it all: a hill and the fir wood behind her; marshes on
this side; woods again on the other; low hills far away before her; out
of them all, the dark torrent of the river showing the swift way to
freedom and the great sea? She drew in a full breath, as if close air
oppressed her.--A bird flew over her then, high above her head,
careering in fickle circles, and at length sailing down out of sight far
into other heavens. Flor watched him bitterly; she comprehended Zoe's
scorn of her past content;--if only she had wings to spread! But Sarp
had told her, that, if she went away, she would one day have wings. None
of Sarp's other arguments weighed a doit,--but wings to roam with over
this beautiful world! The liberty of vagabondage! She watched the clouds
chasing one another through the sunny heaven, watched their shadows
chasing along the fields and hills below; her heart burned that
everything in the world should be more free than she herself. She felt
the wind fanning over her on its way, she took the rich odors that it
brought, she looked after the flower-petal that fluttered away with it,
she saw the strong sunshine penetrating among the shadows of a jungly
spot and catching a thousand points of color in the gloom, she
recognized the constant fluent interchange among all the atoms of the
universe;--why was she alone, capable of flight, chained to one
spot?--She gazed around her at the squalor and the want, the brutish
shapes and faces, her own no better, at the narrow huts; thought of the
dull routine of work never to enrich herself, the possibility of
purchase and cruelty;--she sprung to her feet, all her blood boiling; it
seemed out of the question for her to endure it another moment.--Mas'r
Henry had told her once that he could make his fortune with her dancing,
if he chose; she stood as much in need of a fortune as Mas'r Henry,--why
not make it for herself? why not be off and away, her own mistress,
earning and eating her own bread, sending some day for Zoe, finding Sarp
in those far-off happy latitudes?--It occurred to her, like a discovery
of her own, that, doing the work she was bidden, taking the food she was
given, whipped at will, and bought and sold, she was no better than one
among the cattle of the place;--the sudden sense of degradation made
even her dark cheek burn. She laid a hand down on the earth, her great
Teraph, to see if it were possible it could still be warm and such a
wrong done to her its child. Then, all at once, she understood that wood
and river were open to her fugitive feet, and if she stayed longer in
slavery, it was the fault of no one but herself.--She stood up, for some
one called her; she obeyed the call with alacrity, for she found it in
her power to do so or not as she chose. She felt taller as she stepped
along, and held up her head with the dignity of personality. She
acknowledged, perhaps, that she was no equal of Miss Emma's,--that the
creative hand, making its first essay on her, rounded its complete work
in Miss Emma; but she declared herself now no mere offshoot of the
sod,--she was a human being, a being of beating pulses and affections,
and something within her, stifled here, longing to soar and away.
It was dark before Flor had ceased her novel course of thinking, pursued
through all her little tasks,--beautiful star-lighted dark, full of
broken breezes, soft and warm, and loaded with passionate spices and
flower-breaths; she was alone again, under the shadows of the trees,
entirely surrendered to her whirling fancies. In these few hours she had
lived to the effect of years. She was neither hungry nor tired; she was
conscious of but a single thing,--her whole being seemed effervescing
into one wild longing after liberty. It was not that she could no longer
brook control and be at the beck of each; it was a natural instinct,
awakened at last in all the strength of maturity, that would not let her
breathe another breath in peace unless it were her own,--that made her
feel as though her chains were chafing into the bone,--that taught her
the unutterable vileness and loathliness of bonds,--that convicted her,
in being a slave, of being something foul upon the fair face of
creation. She sat casting about for ways of escape. It was absurd to
think she could again blunder on that secure retreat of the swamp before
being overtaken; no boats ever passed along down the foaming river; if
she were some little mole to hide and burrow in the ground till danger
were over,--but no, she would rather front fear and ruin than lose one
iota of her newly recognized identity. But there was no other path of
safety; she clutched the ground with both hands in her powerlessness; in
all the heaven and earth there seemed to be nothing to help her.
So at last Flor rose; since she could not get away, she must stay; as
for the next day's punishment, she could laugh at it,--it was not its
weight, but its wickedness, that troubled her; but escape, some time,
she would. Lying in wait for method, ambushed for opportunity, it would
go hard, if all failed. Of what value would life be then? she could but
throw that after. So at some time, that was certain, she would
go,--when, it was idle to say; it might be years before affairs were
more propitious than now,--but then, at last, one day, the place that
had known her should know her no more. Nevertheless, despite all this
will and resolution, the heart of the child had sunk like a plummet at
thought of leaving everything, at fear of future fortune; this
deferring, after all, was half like respite.
Flor drew near the out-door fire, where Zoe and one or two others busied
themselves. Something excited them extremely, it was plain to see and
hear. Flor, beyond the circle of the light, strained her ears to listen.
It was only a crumb of comfort that she obtained, but one of those
miraculous crumbs to which there are twelve baskets of fragments: the
Linkum gunboats were down at the mouth of the river. Oh! heaven a boat's
length off! A day and night's drifting and rowing; then climbing the
side slaves, treading the deck freemen,--the shackles fallen, the hands
loosened, the soul saved!
But the boat? There was not such a thing along these banks. Improvise
one. That was not possible. Flor listened, and the wild gasps of hope
died out again into the dulness of despair. Some other time,--not this.
As she stood still, idly and hopelessly hearkening to the mutter of the
old women, with the patches of flickering fire-light falling on their
faces in strange play and revelation, there stole upon her ear a sweeter
and distincter sound, the voice of Miss Agatha, as, leaning out upon the
night, she sang a plaint that consorted with her melancholy mood,
learned in her Northern home in happier hours, without a thought of the
moment of misery that might make it real.
Sooner or later the storms shall beat
Over my slumber from head to feet;
Sooner or later the winds shall rave
In the long grass above my grave.
I shall not heed them where I lie,
Nothing their sound shall signify,
Nothing the headstone's fret of rain,
Nothing to me the dark day's pain.
Sooner or later the sun shall shine
With tender warmth on that mound of mine;
Sooner or later, in summer air,
Clover and violet blossom there.
I shall not feel in that deep-laid rest
The sheeted light fall over my breast,
Nor ever note in those hidden hours
The wind-blown breath of the tossing flowers.
Sooner or later the stainless snows
Shall add their hush to my mute repose;
Sooner or later shall slant and shift
And heap my bed with their dazzling drift.
Chill though that frozen pall shall seem,
Its touch no colder can make the dream
That recks not the sweet and sacred dread
Shrouding the city of the dead.
Sooner or later the bee shall come
And fill the noon with his golden hum;
Sooner or later on half-paused wing
The blue-bird's warble about me ring,--
Ring and chirrup and whistle with glee,
Nothing his music means to me,
None of these beautiful things shall know
How soundly their lover sleeps below.
Sooner or later, far out in the night,
The stars shall over me wing their flight;
Sooner or later my darkling dews
Catch the white spark in their silent ooze.
Never a ray shall part the gloom
That wraps me round in the kindly tomb;
Peace shall be perfect for lip and brow
Sooner or later,--oh, why not now!
Little of this wobegone song touched Flor even enough to let her know
there was some one in the world more wretched than herself. The last
word, the last phrase, rang in her ears like a command,--now, why not
now?--waiting for times and chances, hesitating, delaying, since go she
must,--then why not now? What more did she need than a board and two
sticks? Here they were in plenty. And with that, a bright thought, a
fortunate memory,--the old abandoned scow! And if, after all, she
failed, and went to watery death, did not the singer tell in how little
time all would be quiet and oblivious once again? Oh, why not now?
Perhaps Flor would never have been entirely subjected to this state of
mind but for an injury that she had suffered. Miss Emma had been
rendered ill by the night's exposure in the swamp. In consequence of her
complicity in this crime, Flor had been excluded from her young
mistress's room during her indisposition, and ever since had not only
been deprived of her companionship, but had not even been allowed to
look upon her from a distance. A single week of that made life a desert.
Too proud to complain, Flor saw in this the future, and so recognized,
it may be, that it would be easy to part from the place, having already
parted with Miss Emma. She drew nearer to the group now, and stood there
long, while they wondered at her, gazing into the fire, her head fallen
upon her breast. There was only one thing more to do: her little
squirrel; nothing but her front of battle had kept it safe this many a
day; were she once gone, it would be at the mercy of the first gridiron.
Nobody saw the tears, in the dark and the distance, fast falling over
the tiny sacrifice; but the cook might have guessed at them, when Flor
brought her last offering, and begged that it might be prepared and
taken in to Miss Emma.
How many things there were to do that evening! One wanted water, and
another wanted towels, and a third wanted everything there was to want.
Last of all, little Pluto came running with his unkindled torch,--Mas'r
Henry wanted dancing.
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