The Flower of the Chapdelaines

by George Washington Cable

  "My job requires me," the youth said, "to study character. Let's seewhat a _grand'mere_ of a '_tite-fille_, situated so and so, will do."

  Ovide escorted his momentary customer to the sidewalk door. As hereturned, Chester, rolling map and magazine together, said:

  "It's getting dark. No, don't make a light, it's your closing time andI've a strict engagement. Here's a deposit for this magazine; a fifty.It's all I have--oh, yes, take it, we'll trade back to-morrow. You mustkeep your own rules and I must read this thing before I touch my bed."

  "Even the first few lines absorb you?"

  "No, far from it. Look here." Chester read out: "'_Now, Maud,' said myuncle_--Oh, me! Landry, if the tale's true why that old story-book pose?"

  "It may be that the writer preferred to tell it as fiction, and that onlysomething in me told me 'tis true. Something still tells me so."

  "'_Now, Maud_,'" Chester smilingly thought to himself when, the evening'slater engagement being gratifyingly fulfilled, he sat down with thestory. "And so you were grand'mere to our Royal Street miracle. And youhad a Southern uncle! So had I! though yours was a planter, mine alawyer, and yours must have been fifty years the older. Well, '_Now,Maud_,' for my absorption!"

  It came. Though the tale was unamazing amazement came. The four chiefcharacters were no sooner set in motion than Chester dropped the pamphletto his knee, agape in recollection of a most droll fact a year or twoold, which now all at once and for the first time arrested his attention.He also had a manuscript! That lawyer uncle of his, saying as he sparedhim a few duplicate volumes from his law library, "Burn that if you don'twant it," had tossed him a fat document indorsed: "_Memorandum of anEarly Experience_." Later the nephew had glanced it over, but, like"Maud's" story, its first few lines had annoyed his critical sense and hehad never read it carefully. The amazing point was that "_Now, Maud_"and this "_Memorandum_" most incredibly--with a ridiculous nicety--fittedeach other.

  He lifted the magazine again and, beginning at the beginning a thirdtime, read with a scrutiny of every line as though he studied a witness'sdeposition. And this was what he read:

  IV

  THE CLOCK IN THE SKY

  "Now, Maud," said uncle jovially as he, aunt, and I drove into theconfines of their beautiful place one spring afternoon of 1860, "don'tforget that to be too near a thing is as bad for a good view of it asto be too far away."

  I was a slim, tallish girl of scant sixteen, who had never seen aslaveholder on his plantation, though I had known these two for years,and loved them dearly, as guests in our Northern home before it wasbroken up by the death of my mother. Father was an abolitionist, andyet he and they had never had a harsh word between them. If thegeneral goodness of those who do some particular thing were any proofthat that particular thing is good to do, they would have convinced me,without a word, that slaveholding was entirely right. But they werenot trying to do any such thing. "Remember," continued my uncle,smiling round at me, "your dad's trusting you not to bring back ourhonest opinion--of anything--in place of your own."

  "Maud," my aunt hurried to put in, for she knew the advice I had justheard was not the kind I most needed, "you're going to have for yourown maid the blackest girl you ever saw."

  "And the best," added my uncle; "she's as good as she is black."

  "She's no common darky, that Sidney," said aunt. "She'll keep you busyanswering questions, my dear, and I say now, you may tell her anythingshe wants to know; we give you perfect liberty; and you may be just asfree with Hester; that's her mother; or with her father, Silas."

  "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 familytree."

  As we neared the house I was told more of the father and mother; theirsweet 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, andMingo'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 somuch a week; all he can make beyond that he's allowed to keep." Thecarriage stopped at the door; half a dozen servants came, smiling, andI knew Sidney and Hester at a glance, they were so finely differentfrom 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 thephysical traits that so often make her race uncomely to our eyes; evenher nose was good; her very feet were well made, her hands were slimand shapely, the fingers long and neatly jointed, and there was nothinginky in her amazing blackness, her red blood so enriched it. Yet shewas as really African in her strong, eager mind as in her color, andthe English language, on her tongue, was like a painter's palette andbrushes in the hands of a monkey. Her first question to me after mylast want was supplied came cautiously, after a long gaze at my lightedlamp, 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 myeventual return to the North, "I hope it be a long time afo' you makedat repass!"

  At the next bedtime she began on me with the innocent question of myfavorite flower, but I had not answered three other questions beforeshe had placed me where I must either say I did not believe in theright to hold slaves, or must keep silence; and when I kept silence ofcourse 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 thewords, "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'Let my people go,'" theresponse, "Pra-aise Gawd!" rose from her lips in such volume that shethrew her hands to her mouth. After that she spoke only soft queries,but they grew more and more significant, and I soon saw that hersupposed content was purely a pious endurance, and that her soul feltbondage as her body would have felt a harrow. So I left the fugitivesof Egyptian slavery under the frown of the Almighty in the wildernessof Sin; Sidney was trusting me; uncle and aunt were trusting me; andbetween them I was getting into a narrow corner. After a meditativesilence my questioner asked:

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

  Her manner was childlike, yet she always seemed to come up out of deepthought when she asked a question; she smiled diffidently until thereply began to come, then took on a reverential gravity, and as soon asit was fully given sank back into thought. "Miss Maud, don't youreckon dat ef Moses had a-save' up money enough to a-boughtened hisfreedom, dat'd a-been de wery sign mos' pleasin' to Gawd dat he 'uzhighly fitten to be sot free widout paying?" To that puzzle she waitedfor no answer beyond the distress I betrayed, but turned to mattersless speculative, and soon said good night.

  On the third evening--my! If I could have given all the topography ofthe entire country between uncle's plantation and my native city on themargin of the Great Lakes, with full account of its every natural andsocial condition, her questions would have wholly gathered them in.She asked if our climate was very hard on negroes; what clothing wewore in summer, and how we kept from freezing in midwinter; aboutwages, the price of food, what crops were raised, and what the"patarolers" did with a negro when they caught one at night without apass.

  She made me desperate, and when the fourth night saw her crouched on myfloor it found me prepared; I plied her with questions from start tofinish. She yielded with a perfect courtesy; told of the poor lot ofthe few free negroes of whom she knew, and of the time-serving andshifty indolence, the thievishness, faithlessness, and unaspiringtorpidity of "some niggehs"; and when I opened the way for her to speakof uncle and aunt she poured forth their praises with an ardor thatbrought her own tears. I asked her if she believed she could ever behappy away from them.

  She smiled with brimming eyes: "Why, I dunno, Miss
Maud; whatsomevehcome, and whensomeveh, and howsomeveh de Lawd sen' it, ef us feels hisahm und' us, us ought to be 'shame' not to be happy, oughtn't us?" Allat once she sprang half up: "I tell you de Lawd neveh gi'n no niggeh derights to snuggle down anywhuz an' fo'git de auction-block!"

  As suddenly the outbreak passed, yet as she settled down again herexaltation still showed through her fond smile. "You know what datinqui'ance o' yone bring to my 'memb'ance? Dass 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 conversationthat it should not flow, as all before it had so irresistibly done,into that one deep channel of her thoughts which took in everythingthat fell upon her mind, as a great river drinks the rains of all itsvalleys. Presently the open window gave me my cue: the stars! theunvexed and unvexing stars, that shone before human wrongs ever began,and that will be shining after all human wrongs are ended--our talkshould be of them.

  V

  At the supper-table on the following evening I became convinced ofsomething which I had felt coming for two or three days, wondering thewhile whether Sidney did not feel the same thing. When we rose auntdrew me aside and with caressing touches on my brow and temples saidshe was sorry to be so slow in bringing me into social contact with theyoung people of the neighboring plantations, but that uncle, on hisarrival at home, had found a letter whose information had kept him, andher as well, busy every waking hour since. "And this evening," shecontinued, "we can't even sit down with you around the parlor lamp.Can you amuse yourself alone, dear, or with Sidney, while your uncleand 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 ratherkeep you. Let me see; has Mingo ever danced for you? Why, tell Sidneyto make Mingo come dance for you."

  Mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a mostlaughable wonder, and I should have begged for more than I did, but Isaw 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 footof some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo wereabout to settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to thetop of the flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believedthose eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths ofthe night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few neversank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet wentround and round with all the others; and why I called those the clockof heaven; which gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, onthe time we kept by the sun.

  "Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Sidney. "Miss Maud, please hol' on tellMingo run' fetch daddy an' mammy; dey don't want dat sto'y f'om mesecon' haynded!" Mingo darted off and we waited. "Miss Maud, what dewhite folks mean by de nawth stah? Is dey sich a stah as de nawthstah?"

  I tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the starsaround us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there wouldnecessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never moveat all, and that any star directly in line with those two points wouldseem as still as they.

  "Like de p'int o' de spin'le on de spinnin'-wheel, Miss Maud? Oh,yass, 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 Itook from my watch-guard a tiny compass and let her see how it foreverpicked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, andheld 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 daylong?--Pra-aise Gawd! And do it p'int dah in de rain, an' in de stawmywin' a-fulfillin' of his word, when de ain't a single stah admissiblein 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 fromone 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 dass not a pullite question!" Butshe was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it fortwenty-five cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I toldSidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lipsseemed 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 thepolar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of Cepheus andCassiopeia, 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 wastheir daughter.

  "Chain' to de rock, an' yit sa-ave at las'!" exclaimed Sidney.

  While her husband and children still gazed at the royal stars, Hesterspoke softly to me again. "Miss Maud, dass a tryin' sawt o' sto'y totell 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 countrywas ever known to white folks, or black," and the eyes of all four wereon 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, Ib'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 haddrawn off my shoes and stockings. But then abruptly, she took my feetin 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!" Sheleaned her forehead on my insteps: "Us bleeged to paht some day, MissMaud."

  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 disva-ain worl'," and all at once I found my face in my hands and the saltdrops searching through my fingers; Sidney was kissing my feet andwetting them with her tears.

  At close of the next day, a Sabbath, my uncle and aunt called all theirservants around the front steps of the house and with tears more bitterthan 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 partwith everything, and with them, by sale. Their dark hearers wept withthem, and Silas, Hester, and Sidney, after the rest had gone back tothe quarters, offered the master and mistress, through many a quaintlymisquoted scripture, the consolations of faith.

  "I wish we had set you free, Silas," said uncle, "you and yours, whenwe could have done it. Your mistress and I are going to town to-morrowsolely to get somebody to buy you, all four, together."

  "Mawse Ben," cried the slave, with strange earnestness, "don't you dodat! Don't you was'e no time dat a-way! You go see what you cansa-ave fo' you-all an' yone!"

  "For the creditors, you mean, Silas," said my aunt; "that's done."

  Hester had a question. "Do it all go to de credito's anyhow, Miss'Liza, no matteh how much us bring?" and when aunt said yes, Sidneymurmured to her mother, "I tol' you dat." I wondered when she had toldher.

  Uncle and aunt tried hard to find one buyer for the four, but failed;nobody who wanted the other three had any use for Mingo. It was afternightfall when they came dragging home. "Now don't you fret one bit'bout dat, Mawse Ben," exclaimed Sidney, with a happy heroism in hereyes that I remembered afterward. "'De Lawd is perwide!'"

  "Strange," said my aunt to uncle and me aside, smiling in pity, "howslight an impression disaster makes on their minds!" and that too Iremembered afterward.

 
; As soon as we were alone in my chamber, Sidney and I, she asked me totell her again of the clock in the sky, and at the end of her serviceand of my recital she drew me to my window and showed me how promptlyshe could point out the pole-star at the centre of the clock's vastdial, although at our right a big moon was leaving the tree tops andflooding the sky with its light. Toward this she turned, and liftingan arm with the reverence of a priestess said, in impassioned monotone:

  "'De moon shine full at His comman' An' all de stahs obey.'"

  She kissed my hand as she added good-by. "Why, Sidney!" I laughed,"you mean good night, don't you?"

  She bent low, tittered softly, and then, with a swift return to herbeautiful straightness, said: "But still, Miss Maud, who eveh know whendey say good night dat it ain't good-by?" She fondled my hand betweenher two as she backed away, kissed it fervently again, and was gone.

  When I awoke my aunt stood in broad though sunless daylight at thebedside, with the waking cup of coffee which it was Sidney's wont tobring. I started from the pillow. "Oh! what--who--wh'--where'sSidney? Why--how long has it been raining?"

  "It began at break of day," she replied, adding pensively, "thank God."

  "Oh! were we in such bad need of rain?"

  "_They_ were--precisely when it came. Rain never came straighter fromheaven."

  "They?"--I stared.

  "Yes; Silas and Hester--and Sidney--and Mingo. They must have startedsoon after moonrise, and had the whole bright night, with its blackshadows, for going."