"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 shifty 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 shining 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?
Yes, there"s one there; it"s made all of stars." We were at the foot of some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo were about to settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to the top of the flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believed those eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of the night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never sank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went round and round with all the others; and why I called those the clock of heaven; which gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, on the time we kept by the sun.
"Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Sidney. "Miss Maud, please hol" on tell Mingo run" fetch daddy an" mammy; dey don"t want dat sto"y f"om me secon" haynded!" Mingo darted off and we waited. "Miss Maud, what de white folks mean by de nawth stah? Is dey sich a stah as de nawth stah?"
I tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the stars around us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there would necessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never move at all, and that any star directly in line with those two points would seem as still as they.
"Like de p"int o" de spin"le on de spinnin"-wheel, Miss Maud? Oh, ya.s.s, I b"lieve I un"stand dat; I un"stan" it some."
I showed her the north star, and told her how to find it; and then I took from my watch-guard a tiny compa.s.s and let her see how it forever picked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, and held quiveringly to it. She hung over it with ecstatic sighs. "Do it _see_ de stah, Miss Maud, like de wise men o" de Eas" see de stah o"
Jesus?"
I tried to make plain the law it was obeying.
"And do it p"int dah dess de same in de broad day, an" all day long?--Pra-aise Gawd! And do it p"int dah in de rain, an" in de stawmy win" a-fulfillin" of his word, when de ain"t a single stah admissible in de ske-eye?--De Lawd"s na-ame be pra-aise"!" Her father, mother, and brother were all looking at it with her, now, and she glanced from one to another with long heavings of rapture.
"Miss Maud," said Silas, in a subdued voice, "dat little trick mus" "a"
cos" you a mint o" money."
"Silas," put in Hester, "you know da.s.s not a pullite question!" But she was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it for twenty-five cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I told Sidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop unconsciously while she gazed on the trinket.
They all sat down on the steps nearest below me, and presently, beginning where I had begun with Sidney, I went on to point out the polar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of Cepheus and Ca.s.siopeia, Andromeda and the divine Perseus.
"Lawd, my Lawd !" whispered the mother, "was dey--was dey colo"d?"
I said two of them were king and queen of Ethiopia, and a third was their daughter.
"Chain" to de rock, an" yit sa-ave at las"!" exclaimed Sidney.
While her husband and children still gazed at the royal stars, Hester spoke softly to me again. "Miss Maud, da.s.s a tryin" sawt o" sto"y to tell to a bunch o" po" niggehs; did you dess make dat up--fo" us?"
"Why, Hester," I said, "that was an old, old story before this country was ever known to white folks, or black," and the eyes of all four were on me as the daughter asked: "Ain"t it in de Bi-ible?"
As all but Sidney bade me good night, I heard her say; "I don" care, I b"lieb dat be"n in de Bible an" git drap out by mista-ake!"
In my room she grew queerly playful, and continued so until she had drawn off my shoes and stockings. But then abruptly, she took my feet in her slim black hands, and with eyes lifted tenderly to mine, said: "How bu"ful "pon de mountain is dem wha" funnish good tidin"s!" She leaned her forehead on my insteps: "Us bleeged to paht some day, Miss Maud."
I made a poor effort to lift her, but she would not be displaced.
"Cayn"t no two people count fo" sho" on stayin" togetheh al"ays in dis va-ain worl"," and all at once I found my face in my hands and the salt drops searching through my fingers; Sidney was kissing my feet and wetting them with her tears.
At close of the next day, a Sabbath, my uncle and aunt called all their servants around the front steps of the house and with tears more bitter than any of Sidney"s or mine, told them that by the folly of others, far away, they had lost their whole fortune at one stroke and must part with everything, and with them, by sale. Their dark hearers wept with them, and Silas, Hester, and Sidney, after the rest had gone back to the quarters, offered the master and mistress, through many a quaintly misquoted scripture, the consolations of faith.
"I wish we had set you free, Silas," said uncle, "you and yours, when we could have done it. Your mistress and I are going to town to-morrow solely to get somebody to buy you, all four, together."
"Mawse Ben," cried the slave, with strange earnestness, "don"t you do dat! Don"t you was"e no time dat a-way! You go see what you can sa-ave fo" you-all an" yone!"
"For the creditors, you mean, Silas," said my aunt; "that"s done."