Part 3 (1/2)

”We draw the line at Mingo,” said uncle.

”And who is Mingo?” I inquired.

”Mingo? he's her brother; a very low and trailing branch of the family tree.”

As we neared the house I was told more of the father and mother; their sweet content, their piety, their diligence. ”If we lived in town, where there's better chance to pick up small earnings,” remarked uncle, ”those two and Sidney would have bought their freedom by now, and Mingo's too. Silas has got nearly enough to buy his own, as it is.”

Silas, my aunt explained, was a carpenter. ”He hands your uncle so much a week; all he can make beyond that he's allowed to keep.” The carriage stopped at the door; half a dozen servants came, smiling, and I knew Sidney and Hester at a glance, they were so finely different from their fellows.

That night the daughter and I made acquaintance. She was eighteen, tall, lithe and as straight as an arrow. She had not one of the physical traits that so often make her race uncomely to our eyes; even her nose was good; her very feet were well made, her hands were slim and shapely, the fingers long and neatly jointed, and there was nothing inky in her amazing blackness, her red blood so enriched it. Yet she was as really African in her strong, eager mind as in her color, and the English language, on her tongue, was like a painter's palette and brushes in the hands of a monkey. Her first question to me after my last want was supplied came cautiously, after a long gaze at my lighted lamp, from a seat on the floor. ”Miss Maud, when was de conwention o'

coal-oil 'scuvvud?” And to her good night she added, in allusion to my eventual return to the North, ”I hope it be a long time afo' you make dat repa.s.s!”

At the next bedtime she began on me with the innocent question of my favorite flower, but I had not answered three other questions before she had placed me where I must either say I did not believe in the right to hold slaves, or must keep silence; and when I kept silence of course she knew. For a long moment she dropped her eyes, and then, with a soft smile, asked if I would tell her some Bible stories, preferably that of ”Moses in de boundaries o' Egyp'.”

She listened in gloating silence, rarely interrupting; but at the words, ”Thus saith the Lord G.o.d of Israel, 'Let my people go,'” the response, ”Pra-aise Gawd!” rose from her lips in such volume that she threw her hands to her mouth. After that she spoke only soft queries, but they grew more and more significant, and I soon saw that her supposed content was purely a pious endurance, and that her soul felt bondage as her body would have felt a harrow. So I left the fugitives of Egyptian slavery under the frown of the Almighty in the wilderness of Sin; Sidney was trusting me; uncle and aunt were trusting me; and between them I was getting into a narrow corner. After a meditative silence my questioner asked:

”Miss Maud, do de Bible anywhuz capitulate dat Moses aw Aaron aw Joshaway aw Cable _buy_ his freedom--wid money?”

Her manner was childlike, yet she always seemed to come up out of deep thought when she asked a question; she smiled diffidently until the reply began to come, then took on a reverential gravity, and as soon as it was fully given sank back into thought. ”Miss Maud, don't you reckon dat ef Moses had a-save' up money enough to a-boughtened his freedom, dat'd a-been de wery sign mos' pleasin' to Gawd dat he 'uz highly fitten to be sot free widout paying?” To that puzzle she waited for no answer beyond the distress I betrayed, but turned to matters less speculative, and soon said good night.

On the third evening--my! If I could have given all the topography of the entire country between uncle's plantation and my native city on the margin of the Great Lakes, with full account of its every natural and social condition, her questions would have wholly gathered them in.

She asked if our climate was very hard on negroes; what clothing we wore in summer, and how we kept from freezing in midwinter; about wages, the price of food, what crops were raised, and what the ”patarolers” did with a negro when they caught one at night without a pa.s.s.

She made me desperate, and when the fourth night saw her crouched on my floor it found me prepared; I plied her with questions from start to finish. She yielded with a perfect courtesy; told of the poor lot of the few free negroes of whom she knew, and of the time-serving and s.h.i.+fty indolence, the thievishness, faithlessness, and unaspiring torpidity of ”some niggehs”; and when I opened the way for her to speak of uncle and aunt she poured forth their praises with an ardor that brought her own tears. I asked her if she believed she could ever be happy away from them.

She smiled with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes: ”Why, I dunno, Miss Maud; whatsomeveh come, and whensomeveh, and howsomeveh de Lawd sen' it, ef us feels his ahm und' us, us ought to be 'shame' not to be happy, oughtn't us?” All at once she sprang half up: ”I tell you de Lawd neveh gi'n no niggeh de rights to snuggle down anywhuz an' fo'git de auction-block!”

As suddenly the outbreak pa.s.sed, yet as she settled down again her exaltation still showed through her fond smile. ”You know what dat inqui'ance o' yone bring to my 'memb'ance? Da.s.s ow ole Canaan hymn----

”'O I mus' climb de stony hill Pas' many a sweet desiah, De flow'ry road is not fo' me, I follows cloud an' fiah.'”

After she was gone I lay trying so to contrive our next conversation that it should not flow, as all before it had so irresistibly done, into that one deep channel of her thoughts which took in everything that fell upon her mind, as a great river drinks the rains of all its valleys. Presently the open window gave me my cue: the stars! the unvexed and unvexing stars, that shone before human wrongs ever began, and that will be s.h.i.+ning after all human wrongs are ended--our talk should be of them.

V

At the supper-table on the following evening I became convinced of something which I had felt coming for two or three days, wondering the while whether Sidney did not feel the same thing. When we rose aunt drew me aside and with caressing touches on my brow and temples said she was sorry to be so slow in bringing me into social contact with the young people of the neighboring plantations, but that uncle, on his arrival at home, had found a letter whose information had kept him, and her as well, busy every waking hour since. ”And this evening,” she continued, ”we can't even sit down with you around the parlor lamp.

Can you amuse yourself alone, dear, or with Sidney, while your uncle and I go over some pressing matters together?”

Surely I could. ”Auntie, was the information--bad news?”

”It wasn't good, my dear; I may tell you about it to-morrow.”

”Hadn't I better go back to father at once?”

”Oh, my child, not for our sake; if you're not too lonesome we'd rather keep you. Let me see; has Mingo ever danced for you? Why, tell Sidney to make Mingo come dance for you.”

Mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a most laughable wonder, and I should have begged for more than I did, but I saw that it was a part of Sidney's religion to disapprove the dance.

”Sidney,” I said, ”did you ever hear of the great clock in the sky?